ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2008
Promiscuous gene expression patterns in single medullary thymic epithelial cells argue for a stochastic mechanism.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 116 papers.
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Who cites it
116 citing papers in PubMed, 203 citations in OpenAlex.
- Presence of functional, autoreactive human milk-specific IgE in infants with cow's milk allergy.Clinical and experimental allergy : journal of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology · 2012Trial
- IFN-γ-producing self-reactive CD4+ T cells induce autoimmune adrenalitis in a mouse model of Addison's disease.JCI insight · 2026Article
- FGF21 induced by endoplasmic reticulum stress maintains medullary thymic epithelial cell function and central immune tolerance.Science advances · 2026Article
- TCR signal strength during positive selection shapes CD25 expression patterns on thymically derived regulatory T cells.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Fezf2 regulates differentiation of Aire-expressing and post-Aire mimetic epithelial populations maintaining thymic homeostasis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Role of PRC2 in the stochastic expression of Aire target genes and development of mimetic cells in the thymus.The Journal of experimental medicine · 2025Article
- Thymic Interferons: A Little Goes a Long Way.Immunological reviews · 2025Review
- Intrathymic Regulation of Dendritic Cell Subsets and Their Contributions to Central Tolerance.Immunological reviews · 2025Review
- The Thymus as a Mirror of the Body's Gene Expression.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2025Review
- Thymic Crosstalk: An Overview of the Complex Cellular Interactions that Control the Establishment of T-Cell Tolerance.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2025Review
- The Autoimmune Regulator (AIRE) Gene, The Master Activator of Self-Antigen Expression in the Thymus.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2025Review
- Generation and repair of thymic epithelial cells.The Journal of experimental medicine · 2024Review
- Thymic Mimetic Cells: Ontogeny as Immunology.Annual review of cell and developmental biology · 2024Review
- SKI Regulates Medullary Thymic Epithelial Cell Differentiation to Control Peripheral T Cell Responses in Mice.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2024Article
- Article
- Immune tolerance and the prevention of autoimmune diseases essentially depend on thymic tissue homeostasis.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Review
- Learning the Autoimmune Pathogenesis Through the Study of Aire.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2024Article
- Interferon autoantibodies as signals of a sick thymus.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Review
- The single-cell transcriptome of mTECs and CD4Frontiers in immunology · 2024Article
- Ikaros is a principal regulator of AireScience immunology · 2023Article
56 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Promiscuous expression of tissue-restricted autoantigens in medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) imposes central T cell tolerance. The molecular regulation of this unusual gene expression is not understood, in particular its delineation from cell lineage-specific gene expression control remains unclear. Here, we compared the expression profile of the casein gene locus in mTECs and mammary gland epithelial cells by single cell PCR. Mammary gland cells showed highly correlated intra- and interchromosomal coexpression of milk proteins (the casein genes, lactalbumin-alpha and whey acidic protein) and one of its transcriptional regulators (Elf5). In contrast, coexpression of these genes in mature CD80(hi) mTECs was rarely observed and no pattern of gene expression in individual mTECs was discernible. The apparent stochastic expression pattern of genes within the casein locus, the lower mRNA levels compared with mammary gland cells in conjunction with frequent coexpression of insulin in single mTECs clearly delineates the molecular mechanism(s) of promiscuous gene expression from cell lineage-specific gene control.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.