T-cell Receptor CDR3 Sequence but Not Recognition Characteristics Distinguish Autoreactive Effector and Foxp3+ Regulatory T-cells

High self-reactivity drives T-bet and potentiates Treg function in tissue-specific autoimmunity

“…Some studies suggest that tissue specificity is critical for recruitment of Tregs to the target tissue (6,8,54,55), while others have shown that during immunization-induced CNS autoimmunity, only about half of Treg TCRs are reactive to the immunodominant self-antigen (56). It is unclear if the remaining 50% of Tregs are not specific to tissue antigen or if perhaps they are reactive to a different, undefined antigen.…”

FOXP3+ regulatory T cells and their functional regulation

“…32 Furthermore, Rubtsov and colleagues used a Foxp3 GFP-Cre-ERT2 system, which only labeled FOXP3 expressing T cells after tamoxifen treatment to trace the plasticity of FOXP3 1 T cells and found that only ,5% of FOXP3 1 T cells could lose FOXP3 expression, even if the mice were challenged with various inflammatory insults. 33 In addition, Hori and colleagues showed that only a minor fraction of CD25 2 FOXP3 1 T cells could lose FOXP3 expression in lymphopenic and in vitro polarization settings, whereas most CD25 1 FOXP3 1 T cells exhibit stability and resistance to convert into Th or Th-like cells.…”

TCR Bias of In Vivo Expanded T Cells in Pancreatic Islets and Spleen at the Onset in Human Type 1 Diabetes

“…A binomial statistics test was applied, resulting in four patterns (11-14 aa) that defined amino acid preferences in the NDN region. Conserved CDR3b features have been associated with Ag specificity among TCRs expressed by responding T cell clones (50). According to this, the defined CDR3 patterns, formed by the most abundant amino acids in certain positions, should be related to restricted specificities.…”