Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Cancer Research Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA.
Nat Immunol. 2012 Oct;13(10):1000-9. doi: 10.1038/ni.2395. Epub 2012 Aug 19.
Using whole-genome microarray data sets of the Immunological Genome Project, we demonstrate a closer transcriptional relationship between NK cells and T cells than between any other leukocytes, distinguished by their shared expression of genes encoding molecules with similar signaling functions. Whereas resting NK cells are known to share expression of a few genes with cytotoxic CD8(+) T cells, our transcriptome-wide analysis demonstrates that the commonalities extend to hundreds of genes, many encoding molecules with unknown functions. Resting NK cells demonstrate a 'preprimed' state compared with naive T cells, which allows NK cells to respond more rapidly to viral infection. Collectively, our data provide a global context for known and previously unknown molecular aspects of NK cell identity and function by delineating the genome-wide repertoire of gene expression of NK cells in various states.
利用免疫基因组计划的全基因组微阵列数据集，我们证明 NK 细胞与 T 细胞之间的转录关系比任何其他白细胞都更为密切，其特征是它们共同表达具有相似信号功能的分子编码基因。虽然静止的 NK 细胞已知与细胞毒性 CD8(+) T 细胞共享少数基因的表达，但我们的全转录组分析表明，这种共性扩展到数百个基因，其中许多编码具有未知功能的分子。与幼稚 T 细胞相比，静止的 NK 细胞表现出“预先激活”的状态，这使 NK 细胞能够对病毒感染更快地做出反应。总的来说，我们的数据通过描绘各种状态下 NK 细胞的全基因组表达谱，为 NK 细胞的身份和功能的已知和以前未知的分子方面提供了一个整体背景。
