Eric Vivier's group at the Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy (CNRS/Inserm/Aix-Marseille University) has highlighted the heterogeneity of "Natural Killer" (NK) cells in humans and mice, blood and spleen. To do this, they used high throughput single-cell RNA sequencing or scRNA-seq, a state-of-the-art molecular biology technique that allows the study of the transcriptomic profile of each cell separately. This allowed them to identify an organ-specific signature of NK cells, and to describe the similarities between humans and mice in terms of subpopulations of NK cells. This is the first time that scientists have been interested in comparing these cells between species. The results were published on November 6, 2018 in the journal Immunity.
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