A thymic pathway of mouse natural killer cell development characterized by expression of GATA-3 and CD127.

Christian A. J. Vosshenrich (1) , Marcos E. García-Ojeda (1) , Sandrine I. Samson-Villéger (1) , Valerie Pasqualetto (2, 3) , Laurence Enault (1) , Odile Richard-Le Goff (1) , Erwan Corcuff (1) , Delphine Guy-Grand (1) , Benedita Rocha (3) , Ana Cumano (4) , Lars Rogge (5) , Sophie Ezine (3) , James P. Di Santo (1)

1 Cytokines et Développement Lymphoïde
2 UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5
3 U591 - Differenciation Thymique et Physiologie des Lymphocytes T
4 Développement des Lymphocytes
5 Immunorégulation

Natural killer (NK) cell development is thought to occur in the bone marrow. Here we identify the transcription factor GATA-3 and CD127 (IL-7R alpha) as molecular markers of a pathway of mouse NK cell development that originates in the thymus. Thymus-derived CD127+ NK cells repopulated peripheral lymphoid organs, and their homeostasis was strictly dependent on GATA-3 and interleukin 7. The CD127+ NK cells had a distinct phenotype (CD11b(lo) CD16- CD69(hi) Ly49(lo)) and unusual functional attributes, including reduced cytotoxicity but considerable cytokine production. Those characteristics are reminiscent of human CD56(hi) CD16- NK cells, which we found expressed CD127 and had more GATA-3 expression than human CD56+ CD16+ NK cells. We propose that bone marrow and thymic NK cell pathways generate distinct mouse NK cells with properties similar to those of the two human CD56 NK cell subsets.

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Immunology

Christian A. J. Vosshenrich, Marcos E. García-Ojeda, Sandrine I. Samson-Villéger, Valerie Pasqualetto, Laurence Enault, et al.. A thymic pathway of mouse natural killer cell development characterized by expression of GATA-3 and CD127.. Nature Immunology, 2006, 7 (11), pp.1217-24. ⟨10.1038/ni1395⟩. ⟨pasteur-00362040⟩