Phenotype of liver natural killer cells under starvation.

<p>Isolated liver lymphocytes from 3 mouse groups were stained with monoclonal antibodies against the cell surface markers TRAIL, CD69, CD122, and CD25 prior to analysis by flow cytometry. Representative natural killer (NK) cell phenotype analyses from (A) fed, (B) 1-day-fasted and (C) 3-day-fasted mice are presented in dot plots and histograms. TCRβ⁻ NK1.1⁺ cells were gated as NK cells. The dotted lines represent the negative control. The distribution of TRAIL, CD69, CD122, and CD25 expression in NK cells is indicated by the solid lines (shaded areas) and the percentage and mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of positive cells are provided. (D) The percentages or (E) MFI of liver NK cells that are positive for TRAIL, CD69, CD122, and CD25 are shown in bar graphs as mean plus standard deviation. (F) Dot plots of representative data and (G) bar graph present the mean plus standard deviation of proportion of NK cell subsets regarding to TRAIL and CD69 expression in fed and fasted mice; *<i>p</i> <0.05, **<i>p</i> <0.01 as analyzed by the independent samples T test.