| First Author | Wang HX | Year | 2016 |
| Journal | PLoS One | Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 3 | Pages | e0152641 |
| PubMed ID | 27022746 | Mgi Jnum | J:259822 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6092907 | Doi | 10.1371/journal.pone.0152641 |
| Citation | Wang HX, et al. (2016) Intercellular Protein Transfer from Thymocytes to Thymic Epithelial Cells. PLoS One 11(3):e0152641 |
| abstractText | Promiscuous expression of tissue restricted antigens (TRAs) in medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) is crucial for negative selection of self-reactive T cells to establish central tolerance. Intercellular transfer of self-peptide-MHC complexes from mTECs to thymic dendritic cells (DCs) allows DCs to acquire TRAs, which in turn contributes to negative selection and regulatory T cell generation. However, mTECs are unlikely to express all TRAs, such as immunoglobulins generated only in B cells after somatic recombination, hyper-mutation, or class-switches. We report here that both mTECs and cortical TECs can efficiently acquire not only cell surface but also intracellular proteins from thymocytes. This reveals a previously unappreciated intercellular sharing of molecules from thymocytes to TECs, which may broaden the TRA inventory in mTECs for establishing a full spectrum of central tolerance. |
