The absence of Aire does not alter the CD8 T cell repertoire to infection

Abstract

Abstract Expression of the Aire molecule is thought to be important for self-tolerance through promoting ectopic expression of tissue-specific antigens in the thymus. In the absence of Aire, animals develop a variety of autoimmune conditions. It is unclear whether the absence of self-peptides in the thymus effects the selection of all T cells in the thymus (because they see a different mix of self-peptides), or only allows through a few self-specific cells, without perturbing selection of other cells. Here we study the CD8+ T cell responses to two well characterized influenza virus epitopes (DbNP366 and DbPA224) in AIRE +/+ and AIRE -/- mice using single cell sequencing of ..