Eomes expression identifies the early bone marrow precursor to classical NK cells.
Zhitao LiangHope D AndersonVeronica LocherCrystal O'LearySamantha J RiesenfeldBana JabriBenjamin D McDonaldAlbert BendelacPublished in: Nature immunology (2024)
Natural killer (NK) cells traffic through the blood and mount cytolytic and interferon-γ (IFNγ)-focused responses to intracellular pathogens and tumors. Type 1 innate lymphoid cells (ILC1s) also produce type 1 cytokines but reside in tissues and are not cytotoxic. Whether these differences reflect discrete lineages or distinct states of a common cell type is not understood. Using single-cell RNA sequencing and flow cytometry, we focused on populations of TCF7 + cells that contained precursors for NK cells and ILC1s and identified a subset of bone marrow lineage-negative NK receptor-negative cells that expressed the transcription factor Eomes, termed Eomes hi NK neg cells. Transfer of Eomes hi NK neg cells into Rag2 -/- Il2rg -/- recipients generated functional NK cells capable of preventing metastatic disease. By contrast, transfer of PLZF + ILC precursors generated a mixture of ILC1s, ILC2s and ILC3s that lacked cytotoxic potential. These findings identified Eomes hi NK neg cells as the bone marrow precursor to classical NK cells and demonstrated that the NK and ILC1 lineages diverged early during development.
Keyphrases
- nk cells
- induced apoptosis
- bone marrow
- cell cycle arrest
- single cell
- transcription factor
- small cell lung cancer
- magnetic resonance
- signaling pathway
- oxidative stress
- endoplasmic reticulum stress
- magnetic resonance imaging
- immune response
- gene expression
- poor prognosis
- computed tomography
- cell death
- long non coding rna
- binding protein
- antimicrobial resistance
- pi k akt
- risk assessment
- genetic diversity