Murine natural killer cells stimulated in vivo do not express the T cell receptor alpha, beta, gamma, T3 delta, or T3 epsilon genes.

Murine blast natural killer (NK) cells responding to in vivo stimulation were isolated and characterized as to their expression of the T cell receptor (TCR) variable genes alpha, beta, and gamma and the TCR constant genes T3 delta and T3 epsilon. In vivo stimulated blast T cells were isolated for comparison. RNA extracted from highly purified blast cell populations elicited in vivo was probed for TCR transcripts by Northern blot analysis. In contrast to the blast T cells which expressed high levels of the alpha, beta, delta, and epsilon genes, blast NK cells expressed very low to not detectable levels of these genes. Blast NK cells isolated from euthymic mice were comparable to those isolated from athymic mice and both populations had profoundly reduced levels of transcripts for TCR genes. The expression of gamma-chain genes was extremely low in the in vivo elicited blast T cells as well as the blast NK cells. Highly purified NK cells isolated from unmanipulated mice and propagated in culture with recombinant interleukin 2 for short periods of time also had extremely low levels of delta and epsilon, whereas T cells expanded in culture had high level expression of these genes. As delta and epsilon appear to be required for expression of a functional recognition structure on the T cell surface and are expressed early in T cell ontogeny, these results indicate that the functional NK cells responding to proliferation signals do not form a conventional T cell recognition structure. Furthermore, the results support a separation of the T cell and NK cell lineages early in ontogeny.