Figure 5.
TECs transcriptome and TCRs repertoire formation in the thymus. PGE is common to cortical and medullary TECs. However, mTECs have higher PGE than cTECs due to the expression of several transcriptional factors as AIRE, FezF2, and DEAF1, which also provide transcription of thousands of TSAs genes in mTECs. The contribution of these transcription factors to TSAs expression is shown in the Figure as a percent of total TSAs expression in mTEChi population. On the left, changes in the TCR repertoire during positive and negative selection are shown. PGE, Promiscuous Gene Expression; cTECs, cortical thymic epithelial cells; mTECs, medullary thymic epithelial cells; AIRE, Autoimmune Regulator; FezF2, Forebrain Embryonic Zinc Finger-Like Protein 2; DEAF1, Deformed Epidermal Autoregulatory Factor 1; HSC, Hematopoietic stem cells; ETP, Early T-cell Precursor; DN, double-negative stage, DP, double-positive stage, SP, single-positive stage of thymocytes maturation.