Nature Communications (Jul 2018)

TCR signal strength controls thymic differentiation of iNKT cell subsets

  • Kathryn D. Tuttle,
  • S. Harsha Krovi,
  • Jingjing Zhang,
  • Romain Bedel,
  • Laura Harmacek,
  • Lisa K. Peterson,
  • Leonard L. Dragone,
  • Adam Lefferts,
  • Catherine Halluszczak,
  • Kent Riemondy,
  • Jay R. Hesselberth,
  • Anjana Rao,
  • Brian P. O’Connor,
  • Philippa Marrack,
  • James Scott-Browne,
  • Laurent Gapin

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05026-6
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 13

Abstract

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Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells can be subsetted by their cytokine profiles, but how they develop in the thymus is unclear. Here the authors show, by analysing mice carrying mutant Zap70 genes, that T cell receptor signaling strength induces epigenetic changes of genes to modulate iNKT lineages.