innate and adaptive branches of natural killer cells

Wouldn't you want to be called a natural killer cell? NKC
That's a pretty cool name, but it's also confusing to a lot of people. What does it mean to be a natural killer cell?

Try this for size:

(a) PCA of NK cells, innate-like T cells and adaptive αβ T cell populations (presented as in Fig. 1a). (b) Hierarchical clustering of the NK cell–T cell complex populations, based on Euclidean distances of averaged arrays of a population, with all genes expressed in any of these populations included in the analysis. (c) Overlapping of genes expressed in NK cells (NK), γδ T cell (γδ T) and iNKT cells (CD4+ (iNKT 4+) or CD4− (iNKT 4−)) but not in adaptive αβ T cells (αβ T); these genes met a δ-score threshold of 0.5 (genes unique to resting NK cells, Fig. 3). Color indicates function of molecule encoded: green, effector molecule; purple, surface molecule; blue, transcription factor. (d,e) Frequency of NKR-expressing cells (d) and cells expressing T-bet or Syk (e) among NK cells and innate-like lymphocytes (as in c) relative to their frequency among TCRαβ+ T cells, assessed by flow cytometry (x axis, fluorescence intensity; y axis, percentage of maximum). (f) Abundance of Rbpms mRNA in iNKT cell and γδ T cell populations isolated from thymus or spleen, presented as a normalized microarray. (g) Expression of Spry1, Spry2 and Spry4 by splenic leukocyte populations (above), presented relative to the median expression value of all analyzed populations. Spry3 expression was not above background in any population and is not presented here. Data are representative of two experiments (error bars (d–f), s.e.m.). Data presented are based on the analysis of a minimum of three independent replicates per cell type (a–c).

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