Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Erikson, Jan
• Radic, Marko Z
• Camper, Sally A
• Hardy, Richard R
• Carmack, Condie
• Weigert, Martin

Titel

Expression of anti-DNA immunoglobulin transgenes in non-autoimmune mice

Ist Teil von

• Nature (London), 1991-01, Vol.349 (6307), p.331-334

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

1991

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Self-reactive B cells can be regulated by either deletion or inactivation. These manifestations of self-tolerance have been dramatically shown in transgenic mice in which the number of self-reactive cells has been artificially expanded. We have now extended these models to ask if B-cell tolerance as described for non-disease-associated antigens also operates for the targets of autoimmunity. The target we have chosen is DNA. Anti-DNA antibodies are diagnostic of certain autoimmune syndromes in humans and are a characteristic of the murine model of systemic autoimmunity, the MRl/lpr mouse. Antibodies to both single-stranded and double-stranded DNA have been implicated in disease. By generating anti-DNA transgenic mice, we have addressed the question of whether DNA-specific B cells are regulated in normal (non-autoimmune) mice. We indeed found that most transgenic B cells bind DNA, yet we failed to detect secreted anti-DNA. We suggest that as a consequence of their self-reactivity these B cells are developmentally arrested.