Per E. Olofsson, Elin Forslund, Bruno Vanherberghen, Ksenia Chechet, Oscar Mickelin, Alexander Rivera Ahlin, Tobias Everhorn, Björn Önfelt
Abstract
Natural killer (NK) cells serve as one of the first lines of defense against viral infections and transformed cells. NK cell cytotoxicity is not dependent on antigen presentation by target cells, but is dependent on integration of activating and inhibitory signals triggered by receptor-ligand interactions formed at a tight intercellular contact between the NK and target cell, i.e., the immune synapse. We have studied the single-cell migration behavior and target-cell contact dynamics of resting and interleukin (IL)-2-activated human peripheral blood NK cells. Small populations of NK cells and target cells were confined in microwells and imaged by fluorescence microscopy for >8 h. Only the IL-2-activated population of NK cells showed efficient cytotoxicity against the human embryonic kidney 293T target cells. We found that although the average migration speeds were comparable, activated NK cells showed significantly more dynamic migration behavior, with more frequent transitions between periods of low and high motility. Resting NK cells formed fewer and weaker contacts with target cells, which manifested as shorter conjugation times and in many cases a complete lack of post-conjugation attachment to target cells. Activated NK cells were approximately twice as big as the resting cells, displayed a more migratory phenotype, and were more likely to employ "motile scanning" of the target-cell surface during conjugation. Taken together, our experiments quantify, at the single-cell level, how activation by IL-2 leads to altered NK cell cytotoxicity, migration behavior, and contact dynamics.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 7. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 06 June 2024.
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#5,670,946
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Outputs from Frontiers in immunology
#6,457
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#50,619
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in immunology
#11
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Altmetric has tracked 26,563,001 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 78th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 33,384 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.6. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its peers.
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