Intronic regulation of Aire expression by Jmjd6 for self-tolerance induction in the thymus

• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9820
• Publication Date: 2015-11-04T12:36:59Z
• Authors: Toyoshi Yanagihara; Fumiyuki Sanematsu; Tetsuya Sato; Takehito Uruno; Xuefeng Duan; Takahiro Tomino; Yosuke Harada; Mayuki Watanabe; Yuqing Wang; Yoshihiko Tanaka; Yoichi Nakanishi; Mikita Suyama; Fukui Yoshinori
• Keywords: Mice, Knockout; 0301 basic medicine; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; RNA Splicing; Immunoblotting; Fluorescent Antibody Technique; Mice, Nude; Autoimmunity; Epithelial Cells; Receptors, Cell Surface; Flow Cytometry; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; Article; Introns; Blotting, Southern; Mice; 03 medical and health sciences; HEK293 Cells; Organ Culture Techniques; Self Tolerance; Gene Expression Regulation; Animals; Humans

AbstractThe thymus has spatially distinct microenvironments, the cortex and the medulla, where the developing T-cells are selected to mature or die through the interaction with thymic stromal cells. To establish the immunological self in the thymus, medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) express diverse sets of tissue-specific self-antigens (TSAs). This ectopic expression of TSAs largely depends on the transcriptional regulator Aire, yet the mechanism controlling Aire expression itself remains unknown. Here, we show that Jmjd6, a dioxygenase that catalyses lysyl hydroxylation of splicing regulatory proteins, is critical for Aire expression. Although Jmjd6 deficiency does not affect abundance of Aire transcript, the intron 2 of Aire gene is not effectively spliced out in the absence of Jmjd6, resulting in marked reduction of mature Aire protein in mTECs and spontaneous development of multi-organ autoimmunity in mice. These results highlight the importance of intronic regulation in controlling Aire protein expression.