"Despite their forbidding name, natural killer cells are the good guys in the never-ending war against disease."
Job Ad for 'Ninja' aka Natural Killer Cells -
"Wanted: Cells capable of wreaking havoc. Loner types who identify a target and then recruit team members as needed. Must be aggressive yet equally discriminating, able to identify normal, allogeneic tissues on the fly."
Figure 3 : Natural killer cells and dendritic cells: rendezvous in abused tissues - Nature Reviews Immunology
From the following article:
"Natural killer cells and dendritic cells: rendezvous in abused tissues"
-Alessandro Moretta
Nature Reviews Immunology 2, 957-965 (December 2002)
doi:10.1038/nri956
http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v2/n12/fig_tab/nri956_F3.html
See also:
"Some of your body's cells have a 'license to kill'" (PhysOrg.com)
February 22nd, 2009 By Robert S. Boyd in Medicine & Health / Research
http://www.physorg.com/news154541184.html
"These tiny assassins, the immune system's rapid-response team, can quickly spot a dangerous cell, poke holes in its outer wall and release poisons to destroy it. They also alert other immune cells to join the attack."
Like some espionage agents, NK cells have a "license to kill," according to Wayne Yokoyama, an immunologist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. The "license" is a molecular tag that allows a killer cell to whack a bad cell.
Although NK cells were discovered more than 30 years ago, they're still not well understood, and they remain an active field of research. Scientists are trying to figure out how killer cells "see" a target cell, how they tell whether it's infected or healthy and how they carry out their lethal task.
"We remain puzzled about where and when NK cells develop," James Di Santo, the director of the immunology department at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, acknowledged in the journal Nature Immunology. "We still have many questions."
Like some espionage agents, NK cells have a "license to kill," according to Wayne Yokoyama, an immunologist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. The "license" is a molecular tag that allows a killer cell to whack a bad cell.
Although NK cells were discovered more than 30 years ago, they're still not well understood, and they remain an active field of research. Scientists are trying to figure out how killer cells "see" a target cell, how they tell whether it's infected or healthy and how they carry out their lethal task.
Like some espionage agents, NK cells have a "license to kill," according to Wayne Yokoyama, an immunologist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. The "license" is a molecular tag that allows a killer cell to whack a bad cell.
Although NK cells were discovered more than 30 years ago, they're still not well understood, and they remain an active field of research. Scientists are trying to figure out how killer cells "see" a target cell, how they tell whether it's infected or healthy and how they carry out their lethal task.
"We remain puzzled about where and when NK cells develop," James Di Santo, the director of the immunology department at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, acknowledged in the journal Nature Immunology. "We still have many questions."
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