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. 2021 Feb 9;9:635511. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.635511

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Copyright © 2021 Kopf and Kiermaier.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Microtubules and lytic granule convergence. Cytotoxic cells assemble lytic granules around the MTOC, which improves the efficiency of targeted killing (upper panel). Impaired lytic granule convergence results in non-directed degranulation and bystander killing of healthy cells (Hsu et al., 2016). The role of centrosome polarization for efficient cytotoxic T lymphocytes and natural killer cell-mediated killing is still unclear. Under certain experimental conditions, MTOC relocalization toward the immune synapse is dispensable for polarized granule secretion and cytotoxicity (Bertrand et al., 2013; Tamzalit et al., 2020). Under these conditions plus-end directed transport along microtubule filaments might deliver lytic granules to the synapse.