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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Sep 9.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Biol. 2013 Sep 9;23(17):10.1016/j.cub.2013.07.015. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.07.015

Table 1.

Innate and adaptive characteristics of NK cells

Innate cell characteristics NK cell characteristics Adaptive cell characteristics
Cell lineage Myeloid, lymphoid lymphoid lymphoid
Genetic encoding of major known recognition receptors Germ-line genes Germ-line genes Rearranging genes
Clonally distributed expression of recognition receptors No Yes (in some casesa) Yes
Multiple recognition receptors can independently activate individual cells Yes Yes No
Cells undergo education processes to prevent autoreactivity Unknown Yes Yes
a

Receptors from the Ly49 and NKG2A-C families of genes, each of which include some activating and some inhibitory members, are expressed in a clonally distributed fashion, whereas receptors such as NKp46 and NKG2D are uniformly expressed.