Comparison of Expression profile between CD3-CD56dimCD16+ CD57+ and CD57neg NK cells

Thirty to 60% of CD56dimCD16bright NK cells in healthy adults express CD57, which is not expressed on immature CD56bright NK cells or fetal and newborn NK cells. We hypothesized that CD57+ NK cells within the CD56dim mature NK cell subset are highly mature and might be terminally differentiated. We used microarrays to assess the transcriptional differences between CD57+ and CD57neg NK cells within the CD56dim mature NK subset. PBMC were obtained from leukocyte reduction Pall filters (Blood Centers of the Pacific) after density gradient centrifugation over Ficoll-Paque (GE Healthcare). CD57+CD3negCD56dimCD16+ and CD57negCD3negCD56dimCD16+ NK cells from three healthy adult donors were sorted into Lysis Solution (100 ml per 10,000 cells) (RNAqueous-Micro kit, Ambion). RNA was analyzed by BioAnalyzer (Agilent) before amplification with the NuGEN WT-Ovation kit (Roche) and analyzing transcripts using Affymetrix Human Gene 1.0 ST arrays. Moderated paired t-tests were used to identify differentially expressed genes (>1.7-fold different) between CD57+ and CD57neg NK cells. The P values were set at <0.001 and <0.005. Supplementary table below reports Fold difference and M data.