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

我们试图研究Aire在ES细胞中表达的机制，希望这一结果将为我们理解Aire在胸腺髓质上皮细胞中的耐受机制提供更好的线索。我们首先通过流式细胞仪分析证实了Aire在ES细胞中的表达，并将ES细胞用于建立Aire^&lt；+/GFP&gt；小鼠。Aire^&lt；+/GFP&GT；小鼠来源的ES细胞也证实了ES细胞的AIRE表达。有趣的是，仅有一半的Aire^&lt；+/GFP&gt；ES细胞表达Aire/GFP。然后，我们整理出GFP^+和GFP^-细胞群，并分别培养了几天。我们发现在GFP^-细胞群中出现了GFP^+细胞。我们还发现在GFP^+细胞群中出现了GFP^-细胞，这表明在ES细胞中Aire基因的表达可能是随机和/或振荡的。

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.