| First Author | Lee V | Year | 2023 |
| Journal | Nat Immunol | Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 3 | Pages | 487-500 |
| PubMed ID | 36759711 | Mgi Jnum | J:337731 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:7495975 | Doi | 10.1038/s41590-023-01425-0 |
| Citation | Lee V, et al. (2023) The endogenous repertoire harbors self-reactive CD4(+) T cell clones that adopt a follicular helper T cell-like phenotype at steady state. Nat Immunol 24(3):487-500 |
| abstractText | The T cell repertoire of healthy mice and humans harbors self-reactive CD4(+) conventional T (T(conv)) cells capable of inducing autoimmunity. Using T cell receptor profiling paired with in vivo clonal analysis of T cell differentiation, we identified T(conv) cell clones that are recurrently enriched in non-lymphoid organs following ablation of Foxp3(+) regulatory T (T(reg)) cells. A subset of these clones was highly proliferative in the lymphoid organs at steady state and exhibited overt reactivity to self-ligands displayed by dendritic cells, yet were not purged by clonal deletion. These clones spontaneously adopted numerous hallmarks of follicular helper T (T(FH)) cells, including expression of Bcl6 and PD-1, exhibited an elevated propensity to localize within B cell follicles at steady state, and produced interferon-gamma in non-lymphoid organs following sustained T(reg) cell depletion. Our work identifies a naturally occurring population of self-reactive T(FH)-like cells and delineates a previously unappreciated fate for self-specific T(conv) cells. |
