Journal article
Metabolic requirements of NK cells during the acute response against retroviral infection
- Abstract:
- Natural killer (NK) cells are important early responders against viral infections. Changes in metabolism are crucial to fuel NK cell responses, and altered metabolism is linked to NK cell dysfunction in obesity and cancer. However, very little is known about the metabolic requirements of NK cells during acute retroviral infection and their importance for antiviral immunity. Here, using the Friend retrovirus mouse model, we show that following infection NK cells increase nutrient uptake, including amino acids and iron, and reprogram their metabolic machinery by increasing glycolysis and mitochondrial metabolism. Specific deletion of the amino acid transporter Slc7a5 has only discrete effects on NK cells, but iron deficiency profoundly impaires NK cell antiviral functions, leading to increased viral loads. Our study thus shows the requirement of nutrients and metabolism for the antiviral activity of NK cells, and has important implications for viral infections associated with altered iron levels such as HIV and SARS-CoV-2.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 2.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-021-25715-z
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 5376
- Publication date:
- 2021-09-10
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-08-21
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Pmid:
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34508086
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1196584
- Local pid:
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pubs:1196584
- Deposit date:
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2021-11-12
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Littwitz-Salomon et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- ©2021 The Author(s). Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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