Role of the thymus in natural tolerance to an autologous protein antigen

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Examination of Thymic Positive and Negative Selection by Flow Cytometry
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M Boguniewicz1, G H Sunshine, Y Borel

  • 1Division of Immunology, Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.

The Journal of Experimental Medicine
|January 1, 1989
PubMed

C5-deficient mice grafted with thymus from C5-sufficient donors and immunized with C5 failed to make humoral antibody to C5, suggesting that the transfer of thymus had induced tolerance. Irradiated C5-deficient hosts repopulated with lymphoid cells from thymectomized C5-deficient mice grafted with C5-sufficient thymus also failed to respond to immunization with C5, thus showing that the state of tolerance can be adoptively transferred. These results demonstrate that natural tolerance to self-protein antigen is "learned" in the thymus.

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