NK cells represent a vital component of the innate immune system. The recent discoveries demonstrating that the functionality of NK cells depends on their differentiation and education status underscore their potential as targets for immune intervention.However, to exploit their full potential, a detailed understanding of the cellular interactions involved in these processes is required. In this regard, the cross-talk between NKT cells and NK cells needs to be better understood. Our results provide strong evidence for NKT cell-induced effects on key biological features of NK cells. NKT-cell activation results in the generation of highly active CD27 high NK cells with improved functionality. In this context, degranulation activity and IFNγ production were mainly detected in the educated subset. In a mCMV infection model, we also demonstrated that NKT-cell stimulation induced the generation of highly functional educated and uneducated NK cells, crucial players in viral control. Thus, our findings reveal new fundamental aspects of the NKT-NK cell axis that provide important hints for the manipulation of NK cells in clinical settings.Keywords: αGalCerMPEG r mCMV r NK-cell differentiation r NK-cell education r NKT cells Additional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher's web-site Introduction NK cells represent a first line of defence against transformed or viral-infected cells by exerting immune regulatory and cytotoxic functions [1]. It was long believed that NK cells are a homogenous and short-lived innate lymphocyte population that retains their fixed phenotypic and functional characteristics. However, findings of a continuous NK-cell differentiation process at steadyCorrespondence: Dr. Peggy Riese e-mail: Peggy.Riese@helmholtz-hzi.de state conditions underscore their, up to now underestimated, multifunctional properties [2][3][4]. Several groups demonstrated that human and mouse NK cells represent a heterogeneous population that can be divided into different subsets with distinct functional properties [5][6][7][8]. In this context, CD27 and Mac-1 have been identified as key markers to dissect murine NK cells. CD27 high Mac-1 high NK cells display enhanced responsiveness, whereas the CD27 low Mac-1 high subset represents NK cells with a higher activation * These authors contributed equally to this work.C 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.eji-journal.eu Eur. J. Immunol. 2015. 45: 1794-1807 Innate immunity 1795 threshold [9,10]. The similarities between CD27 and Mac-1 expressing murine NK cells and human CD56 bright and CD56 dim NK-cell subsets enables a phenotypic and functional characterization comparable to the human system [11,12]. To ensure self-tolerance, NK-cell functionality is controlled by a process termed "education." Educated NK cells expressing inhibitory receptors binding to self-MHC molecules are more responsive to stimulation, whereas uneducated NK cells lacking self-MHC class I receptors are considered to be hypo-responsive [13][...