Unraveling autoimmunity with the adoptive transfer of T cells from TCR-transgenic mice

Transgenesis of rearranged α and β chains from the T-cell receptor has allowed the generation of a variety of mice with a predetermined T-cell repertoire. These mice have been extensively used as tools to circumvent the low precursor frequency of naturally occurring endogenous T cells. As such, they have been valuable to study pathways of T-cell development in the thymus. In addition, these mice can also be considered as a valuable source of naive and/or memory T cells with a defined specificity. I will comment in this chapter the use of this source of T cells with known antigen reactivity to study in vivo T-cell behavior in the periphery, including during autoimmune responses.