| First Author | Bautista JL | Year | 2009 |
| Journal | Nat Immunol | Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 6 | Pages | 610-7 |
| PubMed ID | 19430476 | Mgi Jnum | J:242342 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:5904934 | Doi | 10.1038/ni.1739 |
| Citation | Bautista JL, et al. (2009) Intraclonal competition limits the fate determination of regulatory T cells in the thymus. Nat Immunol 10(6):610-7 |
| abstractText | Because the deletion of self-reactive T cells is incomplete, thymic development of natural Foxp3+CD4+ regulatory T cells (Treg cells) is required for preventing autoimmunity. However, the function of T cell antigen receptor (TCR) specificity in thymic Treg cell development remains controversial. To address this issue, we generated a transgenic line expressing a naturally occurring Treg cell-derived TCR. Unexpectedly, we found that efficient thymic Treg cell development occurred only when the antigen-specific Treg cell precursors were present at low clonal frequency (o1%) in a normal thymus. Using retroviral vectors and bone marrow chimeras, we observed similar activity with two other Treg cell-derived TCRs. Our data demonstrate that thymic Treg cell development is a 'TCR-instructive' process involving a niche that can be saturable at much lower clonal frequencies than is the niche for positive selection. |
