| First Author | Ebert PJ | Year | 2009 |
| Journal | Nat Immunol | Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 11 | Pages | 1162-9 |
| PubMed ID | 19801983 | Mgi Jnum | J:157746 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:4436840 | Doi | 10.1038/ni.1797 |
| Citation | Ebert PJ, et al. (2009) An endogenous positively selecting peptide enhances mature T cell responses and becomes an autoantigen in the absence of microRNA miR-181a. Nat Immunol 10(11):1162-9 |
| abstractText | Thymic positive selection is based on the interactions of T cell antigen receptors (TCRs) with self peptide-major histocompatibility complex (MHC) ligands, but the identity of selecting peptides for MHC class II-restricted TCRs and the functional consequences of this peptide specificity are not clear. Here we identify several endogenous self peptides that positively selected the MHC class II-restricted 5C.C7 TCR. The most potent of these also enhanced mature T cell activation, which supports the hypothesis that one function of positive selection is to produce T cells that can use particular self peptide-MHC complexes for activation and/or homeostasis. We also show that inhibiting the microRNA miR-181a resulted in maturation of T cells that overtly reacted toward these erstwhile positively selecting peptides. Therefore, miR-181a helps to guarantee the clonal deletion of particular moderate-affinity clones by modulating the TCR signaling threshold of thymocytes. |
