First Author | Rivière I | Year | 1998 |
Journal | Immunity | Volume | 9 |
Issue | 2 | Pages | 217-28 |
PubMed ID | 9729042 | Mgi Jnum | J:111440 |
Mgi Id | MGI:3653993 | Doi | 10.1016/s1074-7613(00)80604-4 |
Citation | Riviere I, et al. (1998) Regulation of IL-4 expression by activation of individual alleles. Immunity 9(2):217-28 |
abstractText | To study the in vivo role of IL-4-expressing cells, we developed a strategy to tag these cells, by generating mice in which one IL-4 allele was replaced with a cDNA encoding the human CD2 (huCD2) cell-surface molecule. Expression of the huCD2 reporter was, like IL-4, restricted to the appropriately polarized T helper 2 cells. However, most of the cells expressed only the IL-4 or the targeted allele. Analysis of the frequency of monoallelic versus biallelic expression suggests that the activation of each individual allele is regulated by a stochastic process whose probability can be augmented by increasing the strength of signal delivered through the TCR. Allele-specific activation may be a general feature of cytokine regulation that contributes to the functional diversity within T helper cell subpopulations. |