| First Author | van Santen HM | Year | 2004 |
| Journal | J Exp Med | Volume | 200 |
| Issue | 10 | Pages | 1221-30 |
| PubMed ID | 15534371 | Mgi Jnum | J:94535 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:3513237 | Doi | 10.1084/jem.20041022 |
| Citation | van Santen HM, et al. (2004) Number of T reg cells that differentiate does not increase upon encounter of agonist ligand on thymic epithelial cells. J Exp Med 200(10):1221-30 |
| abstractText | It has been reported that the differentiation of CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells (T reg cells) can be induced by agonist peptide/major histocompatibility complex ligands in the thymus. Exploiting a transgenic mouse line wherein expression of a particular T cell epitope can be controlled temporally and quantitatively, we found that diversion of differentiating thymocytes into the FoxP3 T reg cell pathway by this agonist ligand was essentially nonexistent. However, CD4+CD25+ thymocytes were much less sensitive than their CD4+CD25- companions, by two to three orders of magnitude, to agonist-induced clonal deletion, such that their proportion increased, giving the false impression of induced differentiation. To account for these and prior observations, one can propose that differentiation along the CD4+CD25+ pathway is induced by cues other than recognition of self-agonist cues, which are poorly read by thymocytes, whose T cell receptors are conducive to selection toward the conventional CD4+CD25- lineage. Thus, selective survival, rather than induced differentiation, may explain the apparent enrichment observed here and in previous studies. |
