The regulated expression of a diverse set of genes during thymocyte positive selection in vivo

A signal initiated by the newly formed Ag receptor is integrated with microenvironmcntal cues during T cell development to ensure positive selection of CD4⁺CD8⁺ progenitors into functionally mature CD4 ⁺ or CD8⁺ T lymphocytes. During this transition, a survival program is initiated, TCR gene recombination ceases, cells migrate into a new thymic microenvironment, the responsiveness of the Ag receptor is tuned, and the cells commit to a specific T lineage. To determine potential regulators of these processes, we used mRNA microarray analysis to compare gens expression changes in CD4⁺CD8⁺ thymocytes from TCR transgenic mice that have received a TCR selection signal with those that had not received a signal. We found 129 genes with expression that changed significantly during positive selection, the majority of which were not previously appreciated. A large number of these changes were confirmed by real-time PCR or flow cytometry. We have combined our findings with gene changes reported in the literature to provide a comprehensive report of the genes regulated during positive selection, and we attempted to assign these genes to positive selection process categories.