ArticlePloS one2012
Antigen recognition by autoreactive CD4⁺ thymocytes drives homeostasis of the thymic medulla.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Basic interactions responsible for thymus function explain the convoluted medulla shape.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Early-life homeostatic differentiation of thymus-resident B cells into memory B cells.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- Thymic Crosstalk: An Overview of the Complex Cellular Interactions that Control the Establishment of T-Cell Tolerance.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2025Review
- Histopathologic and transcriptomic phenotypes of a conditional RANKL transgenic mouse thymus.Cytokine · 2022Article
- Recirculating Foxp3Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2022Article
- Thymocytes trigger self-antigen-controlling pathways in immature medullary thymic epithelial stages.eLife · 2022Article
- How Thymocyte Deletion in the Cortex May Curtail Antigen-Specific T-Regulatory Cell Development in the Medulla.Frontiers in immunology · 2022Article
- Differentiation of Pluripotent Stem Cells Into Thymic Epithelial Cells and Generation of Thymic Organoids: Applications for Therapeutic Strategies Against APECED.Frontiers in immunology · 2022Review
- Lymphotoxin: from the physiology to the regeneration of the thymic function.Cell death and differentiation · 2021Review
- Thymic Epithelial Cell Alterations and Defective Thymopoiesis Lead to Central and Peripheral Tolerance Perturbation in MHCII Deficiency.Frontiers in immunology · 2021Article
- Intrathymic adeno-associated virus gene transfer rapidly restores thymic function and long-term persistence of gene-corrected T cells.The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology · 2020Article
- Generation and Regeneration of Thymic Epithelial Cells.Frontiers in immunology · 2020Review
- RANK Signaling in the Differentiation and Regeneration of Thymic Epithelial Cells.Frontiers in immunology · 2020Review
- The RANKL-RANK Axis: A Bone to Thymus Round Trip.Frontiers in immunology · 2019Review
- Lymphotoxin α fine-tunes T cell clonal deletion by regulating thymic entry of antigen-presenting cells.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Twenty Years of AIRE.Frontiers in immunology · 2018Review
- Administration of RANKL boosts thymic regeneration upon bone marrow transplantation.EMBO molecular medicine · 2017Article
- Control of the thymic medulla and its influence on αβT-cell development.Immunological reviews · 2016Review
- Thymic stromal cell subsets for T cell development.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2016Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The thymic medulla is dedicated for purging the T-cell receptor (TCR) repertoire of self-reactive specificities. Medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) play a pivotal role in this process because they express numerous peripheral tissue-restricted self-antigens. Although it is well known that medulla formation depends on the development of single-positive (SP) thymocytes, the mechanisms underlying this requirement are incompletely understood. We demonstrate here that conventional SP CD4⁺ thymocytes bearing autoreactive TCRs drive a homeostatic process that fine-tunes medullary plasticity in adult mice by governing the expansion and patterning of the medulla. This process exhibits strict dependence on TCR-reactivity with self-antigens expressed by mTECs, as well as engagement of the CD28-CD80/CD86 costimulatory axis. These interactions induce the expression of lymphotoxin α in autoreactive CD4⁺ thymocytes and RANK in mTECs. Lymphotoxin in turn drives mTEC development in synergy with RANKL and CD40L. Our results show that Ag-dependent interactions between autoreactive CD4⁺ thymocytes and mTECs fine-tune homeostasis of the medulla by completing the signaling axes implicated in mTEC expansion and medullary organization.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.