ArticleFrontiers in immunology2012
Post-Aire maturation of thymic medullary epithelial cells involves selective expression of keratinocyte-specific autoantigens.
Article in Frontiers in immunology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 111 citations in OpenAlex.
- Thymic Epithelium Abnormalities in DiGeorge and Down Syndrome Patients Contribute to Dysregulation in T Cell Development.Frontiers in immunology · 2019Trial
- Altered expression of autoimmune regulator in infant down syndrome thymus, a possible contributor to an autoimmune phenotype.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2014Trial
- Article
- From Development to Aging: Dynamic Roles of the Thymic Medulla in T Cell Biology.Immunological reviews · 2026Review
- Deconstructing the Thymic Microenvironment Through Genesis to Senescence.Immunological reviews · 2025Review
- Thymic Mimetic Cells: Evolutionarily Ancient Mirrors of the Periphery.Immunological reviews · 2025Review
- The Autoimmune Regulator (AIRE) Gene, The Master Activator of Self-Antigen Expression in the Thymus.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2025Review
- The Ins and Outs of Thymic Epithelial Cell Differentiation and Function.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2025Review
- Antigen presentation for central tolerance induction.Nature reviews. Immunology · 2025Review
- Article
- Assembling the thymus medulla: Development and function of epithelial cell heterogeneity.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2024Article
- The emerging family of RORγtNature reviews. Immunology · 2024Review
- Preclinical Study in Mouse Thymus and Thymocytes: Effects of Treatment with a Combination of Sodium Dichloroacetate and Sodium Valproate on Infectious Inflammation Pathways.Pharmaceutics · 2023Article
- A spatial human thymus cell atlas mapped to a continuous tissue axis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Thymic mimetic cells function beyond self-tolerance.Nature · 2023Article
- Aire drives steroid hormone biosynthesis by medullary thymic epithelial cells.Science immunology · 2023Article
- The clinicopathological significance of thymic epithelial markers expression in thymoma and thymic carcinoma.BMC cancer · 2023Article
- Ehf and Fezf2 regulate late medullary thymic epithelial cell and thymic tuft cell development.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
- Revisiting Aire and tissue-restricted antigens at single-cell resolution.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Review
- Revelations in Thymic Epithelial Cell Biology and Heterogeneity from Single-Cell RNA Sequencing and Lineage Tracing Methodologies.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2023Article
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The autoimmune regulator (Aire)-directed ectopic expression of tissue-specific antigens (TSAs) by mature medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) has been viewed as an essential mechanism in the induction of central tolerance. Recent data suggest that the survival of mTECs extends beyond the Aire+ cell population to form the post-Aire mTEC population and Hassall's corpuscles (HCs). The nature and function of these post-Aire epithelial cells and structures, however, have remained unidentified. In this study, we characterized in detail the end-stage development of mTECs and HCs in both Aire-sufficient and Airedeficient mice. In addition, using a transgenic mouse model in which the LacZ reporter gene is under the control of the endogenous Aire promoter, we purified and analyzed the post-Aire mTECs to characterize their function. We showed that the end-stage maturation of mTECs closely resembles that of keratinocytes and that the lack of Aire results in a marked block of mTEC differentiation, which is partially overcome by ligands for RANK and CD40. We also provide evidence that, during mTEC development, Aire is expressed only once and during a limited 1-2 day period. The following loss of Aire expression is accompanied by a quick downregulation of MHC class II and CD80, and of most of the Aire-dependent and Aire-independent TSAs, with the exception of keratinocyte-specific genes. In the final stage of maturation, the mTECs lose their nuclei to become HCs and specifically express desmogleins (DGs) 1 and 3, which, via cross-presentation by APCs, may contribute to tolerance against these pemphigus vulgaris-related TSAs.
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Registered trials
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.