Tissue-Resident Clonal Expansions of Rhesus Macaque NK Cells

Recent phenotypic, functional and transcriptomic analyses of natural killer (NK) cells in human and animals have established the presence of tissue resident NK(trNK) cells with specific characteristics and a central role in NK memory. The lack of endogenous clonal markers on NK cells impedes understanding the clonal genesis of trNKs. Transplantation of lentivirally-barcoded autologous hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) has allowed tracking of NK cells at a clonal level in rhesus macaques (RM). We reported large KIR-restricted clonal expansions of mature CD56 -CD16 +NK in the peripheral blood (PB) of RM, clonally distinct from myeloid, T, B and CD56 +16 -NK, persisting for months to years, suggesting self-renewal independent of ongoing production from HSPCs (Wu et al, Cell Stem Cell, 2014 and Science Imm, 2018).