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. 2021 Apr 8;35(5):1229–1242. doi: 10.1038/s41375-021-01238-w

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© The Author(s) 2021

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Fig. 2 — Progression of NK cells from quiescence to activation is mediated by activating (in green) and inhibitory (in red) receptors. The balance between both receptor subtypes determines if NK cells are cytotoxic. The inhibitory killer cell immunoglobulin-like rectors (KIRs) and natural killer group 2A (NKG2A) receptor conduct inhibitory signals to restrain NK cell function to avoid killing normal cells under physiological conditions. In contrast, activating receptors such as natural cytotoxic receptors (NCRs)—NKp30, NKp46 and NKp80, and NKG2D trigger NK cell activation following binding to ligands upregulated on target cells undergoing stress and/or infection. PD1: programmed death 1. Illustration was created with BioRender.com.