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Immunology

Natural killer cells remember

Nature volume 457, pages 544–545 (2009)Cite this article

Cells of the adaptive immune system hold a grudge: on re-encountering a pathogen, they show a robust protective response. It seems that natural killer cells of the innate immune system might also have this ability.

Learning, a hallmark of life, produces adaptation to new information. The immune system, like the nervous system, has this ability to learn from previous experience — such as a single encounter with the many pathogens that exist. The result is immunological memory that confers long-lasting protection. For instance, once exposed to the measles virus in childhood, humans are immune to the disease for up to 75 years1. Until now, immunological memory was thought to be a feature of the adaptive immune system, specifically, of immune cells called T and B cells. In this issue, however, Sun et al.2 (page 557) shed light on an unexpected player in the persistence of immunity: natural killer cells, which have traditionally been considered to be part of the innate immune system.

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Figure 1: Natural killer cells and virus exposure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sophie Ugolini and Eric Vivier are in the Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, Université de la Méditerranée, INSERM, CNRS, Campus de Luminy, case 906, 13288 Marseille cedex 9, France, and in the Faculté de Médecine-Timone, Marseille, France. ugolini@ciml.univ-mrs.fr vivier@ciml.univ-mrs.fr ,

    Sophie Ugolini & Eric Vivier

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  1. Sophie Ugolini
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  2. Eric Vivier
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Ugolini, S., Vivier, E. Natural killer cells remember. Nature 457, 544–545 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/457544a

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