CO ₂ and Miocene Climate Change: Atmospheric carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas believed to be one of the most important determinants of climate. Ice cores provide a detailed and direct record of CO ₂ concentrations over the past 800,000 years, but not earlier. Tripati et al. (p. 1394 , published online 8 October) report B/Ca measurements of planktonic foraminifera, from which they can infer atmospheric CO ₂ concentrations, for the past 20 million years. The concentration of atmospheric CO ₂ was similar to preindustrial values for the past 10 millions years, but between 15 and 20 million years ago, during the warm lower Miocene epoch, CO ₂ was more abundant, and major climate transitions toward cooler conditions occurred when CO ₂ decreased substantially.

Natural killer (NK) cells directly lyse tumor or viral-infected cells but also an important role for NK cell cytotoxicity in regulating the extent of immune responses is emerging. Here, we show that autologous human macrophages activated NK cell proliferation and cytokine secretion, increased expression of activating receptors, and primed NK cell cytotoxicity against susceptible target cells. Ligation of NK cell 2B4, and not NKp30 (known to be important for DC-mediated NK cell activation), is critical for this macrophage-mediated NK cell activation. Reciprocally, however, NK cells regulated macrophage activity by directly killing macrophages stimulated by high doses of LPS. Cytolysis was triggered by NKG2D recognition of stress-inducible class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC)–like ligands on macrophages: high doses of LPS induced transcription and surface expression of ULBP1, ULBP2, and ULBP3 and surface expression of constitutively transcribed MICA. Thus, these data suggest a new function for NK cell cytotoxicity in eliminating overstimulated macrophages. Additionally, these interactions define, for the first time, 2 distinct activating NK cell synapses: lytic and nonlytic. Triggering NK cell proliferation and cytokine secretion, but not cytolysis, specifically associated with synaptic accumulation of macrophage F-actin and NK cell 2B4, while macrophages were killed when NK cell F-actin and macrophage ICAM-1 accumulated around a central cluster of NK cell NKG2D/DAP10.

Purpose: NKG2D (natural killer group 2, member D) binds to cellular ligands of the MIC and ULBP/RAET family. These ligands have restricted expression in normal tissue, but are frequently expressed on primary tumors. The role of NKG2D ligands is thought to be important in carcinogenesis but its prognostic effect has not been investigated in such a large cohort. Experimental Design: In our study, 462 primary colorectal tumors were screened for the expression of all MIC/ULBP/RAET proteins and NK cell infiltration. Tumor microarray technology was used for the purpose of this investigation. Results: NKG2D ligands were expressed by the majority of colorectal tumors; however, the level of expression varied considerably. High expression of MIC (68 versus 56 months) or RAET1G (74 versus 62 months) showed improved patient survival. Tumors expressing high levels of MIC and RAET1G showed improved survival of 77 months over tumors that expressed high levels of one ligand or low levels of both. High-level expression of all ligands was frequent in tumor-node-metastasis stage I tumors, but became progressively less frequent in stages II, III, and IV tumors. Expression of MIC was correlated with NK cellular infiltration. Conclusion: The observations presented are consistent with an immunoediting mechanism that selects tumor cells that have lost or reduced their expression of NKG2D ligands. The combination of MIC and tumor-node-metastasis stage was found to be the strongest predictor of survival, splitting patients into eight groups and suggesting prognostic value in clinical assessment. Of particular interest were stage I patients with low expression of MIC who had a similar survival to stage III patients, and may be candidates for adjuvant therapy. (Clin Cancer Res 2009;15(22):6993–7002)

We characterized two novel members of the RAET1/ULBP gene cluster, RAET1E and RAET1G. The encoded proteins were similar to the ULBP in their class I-like α1 and α2 domains, but differed in that, instead of being GPI-anchored, their sequences were type 1 membrane-spanning molecules. Both proteins were capable of being expressed at the cell surface. Both proteins bound the activating receptor NKG2D, and RAET1G bound the human CMV protein UL16. The expression of diverse NKG2D-binding molecules in different tissues and with different properties is consistent with multiple modes of infection- or stress-induced activation.