Table 1.
Study population HLA and KIR genotypes.
Fig 1.
Frequency of CD16+, NKG2A+ and CD57+ NK cells and their subsets expressing or not CD16.
(A) Representative gating strategy for determining the frequency of CD16+/- cells on CD56total, CD56dim, and CD56bright NK cell populations and on the NKG2A-/+ and CD57-/+ subsets of these populations. (B) Frequencies of CD16+/- cells in the CD56total, CD56dim, and CD56bright NK cell populations. Frequencies of expression of NKG2A (C) and CD57 (E) on CD56total, CD56dim, and CD56bright NK cells. A Friedman test was used to assess the significance of matched between group differences. Frequencies of CD16+ and CD16- cells within the NKG2A+ (D) and CD57+ (F) CD56total, CD56dim, and CD56bright NK cell populations. Each data point represents results for 1 of 26 separate individuals. Bar height and error bars represent the median and interquartile range for the data set. Wilcoxon tests were used to determine significance of within subject differences for the indicated NK subsets linked by a line connecting the data sets. Significant values are shown; “*” = p< 0.05; “**” = p< 0.01; “***” = p< 0.001; “****” = p< 0.0001.
Fig 2.
CD16 expression on total CD56+ NK cells populations expressing all combinations of iKIRs and on CD56dim single iNKR expressing NK cell populations.
(A) The frequency of KIR+ (expressing any Boolean combination of KIR2DL1 (2DL1), KIR2DL3 (2DL3), or KIR3DL1 (3DL1]) subsets in CD16- and CD16+ total CD56+ NK cell populations. (B) The gating strategy for assessing the frequencies of single NKG2A, 2DL1, 2DL3, and 3DL1 and CD16 positive CD56dim NK cells. (C) Frequencies of CD16 positive CD56dim NK cells that are single positive for NKG2A (n = 26), 2DL1 (n = 25),2DL3 (n = 22), and 3DL1 (n = 22) or negative for all iNKR tested (iNKR-). Wilcoxon tests were used to determine significance of within subject differences for the indicated NK subsets. Each data point represents results a separate individual. Bar height and error bars represent the median and interquartile range for the data set. Significant values are shown; “**” = p< 0.01; “***” = p< 0.001; “****” = p< 0.0001.
Fig 3.
The frequency of educated and uneducated CD56dim NK cell populations expressing CD16 and one of the inhibitory KIR KIR2DL1, KIR2DL3, or KIR3DL1.
The frequency of CD16+ cells among educated KIR2DL1+ (2DL1) NKG2A-CD56dim NK cells from HLA-C2 homozygotes (n = 8) versus uneducated HLA-C1 homozygotes (n = 11), educated KIR2DL3+ (2DL3) NKG2A-CD56dim NK cells from HLA-C1 homozygotes (n = 10) versus uneducated HLA-C2 homozygotes (n = 7), and educated KIR3DL1+ (3DL1) NKG2A-CD56dim NK cells from Bw4 carriers (n = 8) versus uneducated Bw6 homozygotes (n = 8). The lines and error bars through the datasets represent medians and interquartile ranges. Mann-Whitney tests assessing the significance of differences in the frequency of CD16+, single KIR positive cells in educated versus uneducated NK cell subsets found no significant differences.