ArticleInternational immunology2022
The transcription factor Sox4 is required for thymic tuft cell development.
Article in International immunology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- METTL3 suppresses pyroptosis in obstructive sleep apnea-associated hypertension via YTHDF2-mediated SOX4 mRNA degradation.Journal of physiology and biochemistry · 2026Article
- Fezf2 regulates differentiation of Aire-expressing and post-Aire mimetic epithelial populations maintaining thymic homeostasis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The SOX4-Semaphorin3C axis promotes esophageal adenocarcinoma progression.Cancer letters · 2025Article
- It's Time to Unite: Diversity and Coordination of Thymic Stromal Cells for T Cell Selection and Organ Integrity.Immunological reviews · 2025Review
- Transcript splicing optimizes the thymic self-antigen repertoire to suppress autoimmunity.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2024Article
- The Proteostasis of Thymic Stromal Cells in Health and Diseases.The protein journal · 2024Review
- Assembling the thymus medulla: Development and function of epithelial cell heterogeneity.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2024Article
- Thymic Carcinoma: Unraveling Neuroendocrine Differentiation and Epithelial Cell Identity Loss.Cancers · 2023Article
- Thymic tuft cells: potential "regulators" of non-mucosal tissue development and immune response.Immunologic research · 2023Review
- Tuft Cells: Context- and Tissue-Specific Programming for a Conserved Cell Lineage.Annual review of pathology · 2023Review
- Ehf and Fezf2 regulate late medullary thymic epithelial cell and thymic tuft cell development.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
- Mesenchymal stromal cells in the thymus.Inflammation and regeneration · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) help shape the thymic microenvironment for T-cell development by expressing a variety of peripheral tissue-restricted antigens (TRAs). The self-tolerance of T cells is established by negative selection of autoreactive T cells that bind to TRAs. To increase the diversity of TRAs, a fraction of mTECs terminally differentiates into distinct subsets resembling atypical types of epithelial cells in specific peripheral tissues. As such, thymic tuft cells that express peripheral tuft cell genes have recently emerged. Here, we show that the transcription factor SRY-box transcription factor 4 (Sox4) is highly expressed in mTECs and is essential for the development of thymic tuft cells. Mice lacking Sox4 specifically in TECs had a significantly reduced number of thymic tuft cells with no effect on the differentiation of other mTEC subsets, including autoimmune regulator (Aire)+ and Ccl21a+ mTECs. Furthermore, Sox4 expression was diminished in mice deficient in TEC-specific lymphotoxin β receptor (LTβR), indicating a role for the LTβR-Sox4 axis in the differentiation of thymic tuft cells. Given that Sox4 promotes differentiation of peripheral tuft cells, our findings suggest that mTECs employ the same transcriptional program as peripheral epithelial cells. This mechanism may explain how mTECs diversify peripheral antigen expression to project an immunological self within the thymic medulla.
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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.