Orphan NKs! The mystery of the self-renewing NK cells

Abstract

Like children alive when their parents have not been born, there is a population of natural killer (NK) cells which appear to be self-renewing, according to 2 articles in this issue of Blood. Corat et al and Schlums et al take us closer to this mystery by answering the question: is ongoing production from hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) required to maintain NK-cell homeostasis in humans?^,