ABSTRACT
Mouse thymic stromal cell line 4 (MTSC4) is one of the stromal cell lines established in our laboratory. While losing the characteristics of epithelial cells, they express some surface markers shared with thymic dendritic cells (TDCs). To further study the biological functions of these cells, we compared the capability of MTSC4 with TDCs in the induction of thymocyte apoptosis, using thymic reaggregation culture system. Apoptosis of thymocytes induced by MTSC4 and TDCs was measured by Annexin V and PI staining and analyzed by flow cytometry. We found that MTSC4 selectively augmented the apoptosis of CD4+8+ (DP) thymocytes. This effect was Fas/FasL independent and could not be blocked by antibodies to MHC class I and class II molecules. In addition, MTSC4 enhanced the apoptosis of DP thymocytes from different strains of mice, which implies that MTSC4-induced thymocyte apoptosis is not mediated by the TCR recognition of self peptide/MHC molecules. In contrast to MTSC4, thymocyte apoptosis induced by TDCs was MHC-restricted. Thus, MHC-independent fashion of stromal-DP thymocyte interaction may be one of the ways to induce thymocyte apoptosis in thymus. Our study has also shown that the interaction of MTSC4 stromal cells and thymocytes is required for the induction of thymocyte apoptosis.
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Abbreviations
- BSS:
-
balanced salt solution
- DN:
-
double-negative
- DP:
-
double-positive
- Int:
-
intermediate
- MTEC1:
-
mouse thymic epithelial cell line 1
- MTSC4:
-
mouse thymic stromal cell line 4
- NCS:
-
newborn calf serum
- SP:
-
single-positive
- TDC:
-
thymic dendritic cell
- TRC:
-
thymic reaggregation culture
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Jia Ping TAO and Shi Liang MA for FACS sorting.
This work was funded by grants from Major State Bascic Research Development Program of China (No. G1999053904), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30271200) and Young Scientist Cooperation Research Fund (No. 39928019).
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HE, X., LI, J., QIAN, X. et al. The thymic stromal cell line MTSC4 induced thymocyte apoptosis in a non-MHC-restricted manner. Cell Res 14, 125–133 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.cr.7290211
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.cr.7290211
