Roles of AIRE in the development of early embryos and in the establishment of immunological self-tolerance

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We sought to investigate the mechanisms underlying the AIRE expression in ES cells, hoping that the results would give us a better clue for the understanding of the tolerogenic roles of Aire in medullary thymic epithelial cells. We first confirmed Aire expression from ES cells by the flow cytometric analysis, with ES cells used for the establishment of Aire^<+/ gfp> mice. Aire expression from ES cells was also confirmed from ES cells derived from Aire^<+/ gfp> mice. Interestingly, Aire/ GFP expression was observed only from a half population of the Aire^<+/ gfp> ES cells. We then sorted out GFP^+ and GFP^-cell populations, and cultured them separately for a couple of days. We found the appearance of GFP^+ cells from GFP^-cell population. We also found the appearance of GFP^-cells from GFP^+ cell population, suggesting a possible stochastic and/ or oscillating nature of Aire gene expression in ES cells.