Figure 5.

Chemokine and cytokine production by NK cell subsets. (A) Dotplot visualization of chemokine mRNA expression per cell subset. Shown is the mean mRNA expression (color intensity) and the fraction of cells of each subset expressing the mRNA (size). ltNK = lymphoid tissue NK, NK prolif = proliferating NK, ILC = innate lymphoid cells. (B) Intracellular expression of chemokines and cytokines in NK cells cultured in the presence or absence of stimulation, as measured by spectral cytometry. A representative blood donor is shown. (C) NK cells were cultured as bulk thawed mononuclear cells (MNC, n=5 blood, n=5 bone marrow) or as freshly enriched NK cells (n=4 blood, n=2 bone marrow). MNC were stimulated for 4 hours and enriched NK cells were stimulated overnight, by cytokines or target-cell(-like) stimulation. The intracellular effector molecule production was determined in the gated peripheral blood (PB) and bone marrow (BM) derived NK cell subsets. Bars indicate median and interquartile range. A paired Friedman test was applied to test for differences with isotype control for each subset. Adjusted P-value, *<0.05, **<0.01, ***<0.001. (D) NK cells from PBMC stimulated for four hours with IL12-15-18 (green), anti-CD16 (blue), or isotype control (purple) were embedded in a UMAP. The protein expression of several markers is indicated on the UMAP plot. A representative donor is shown.