International Immunology, Vol. 12, No. 1, 67-72,
January 2000
© 2000 Japanese Society for Immunology
On the role of high- and low-abundance class II MHC–peptide complexes in the thymic positive selection of CD4+ T cells
Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA 30912, USA
1 Basel Insitute for Immunology, CH-4005 Basel, Switzerland
Correspondence to: L. Ignatowicz
The role of self-peptides bound to MHC molecules in the selection of T cells in the thymus remains controversial. Here, we have tested whether a high-abundance single class II MHC–peptide complex has a dominant effect on the repertoire of CD4+ T cells selected by low-abundance class II MHC–peptide complexes. For these studies, we have used H-2b mice that lack an invariant chain (Ii) (AbIi–) and their transgenic variant (AbAbEpIi–) that co-expresses Ab molecules covalently bound with a single peptide Ep(52–68). In these latter mice, close to 50% of all Ab molecules are occupied by Ep(52–68) peptide. Although the AbEp complex was abundantly expressed in the thymus under conditions excluding negative selection on bone marrow-derived cells, no striking quantitative difference between repertoires of TCR expressed on CD4+ T cells in AbIi– and AbAbEpIi– mice was noticed. Our results are consistent with the view that diverse, low-abundance self-peptides play an important role in thymic positive selection and do not support the notion that dominant, high-abundance peptides may be critical for shaping the TCR repertoire.
Keywords: MHC–peptide complex, positive selection, T cell repertoire
Transmitting editor: T. Sasazuki
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