Single-cell gene expression profile of primary human peripheral blood natural killer cells grouped into seven phenotypically-defined populations

Human peripheral blood natural killer cells are grouped in various ways according to phenotypic and functional characteristics. We sorted peripheral blood natural killer cells from healthy donors into seven surface phenotype-defined populations, hashtagged them, and sequenced them. This analysis permitted simultaneous identification of transcriptional clusters and traceback of the components to their phenotypic groups. Natural killer cells were isolated and sorted into seven populations according to surface expression of CD56, NKG2A, NKG2C, and NKp30 from the PBMCs of two healthy donors. These seven populations were hashtagged and recombined in equal numbers before submission as a single sample for each biological replicate for feature barcode and gene expression sequencing.