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Recollections of the discovery of promiscuous antigen expression in mTECs

Nature Immunology volume 21, pages 1303–1305 (2020)Cite this article

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Whether and how thymic tolerance to tissue-restricted antigens (TRA) could be achieved posed a conundrum until Klein and colleagues discovered that medullary thymic epithelial cells were capable of bursts of TRA expression.

In 1994, I finished my diploma thesis on plant defense mechanisms against fungal pathogens at the Max-Planck-Institute in Cologne. In ‘green genetics,’ methods of gene transfer were still in their infancy. As a plant immunologist who had just manually sequenced 5.4 kb of parsley DNA (accomplishing this in only a few months was considered quite an achievement at the time), I couldn’t help following how vertebrate immunology was revolutionized by genetic engineering with what may be described as a ‘scientific inferiority complex’. When I learned that Bruno Kyewski at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg was looking for a PhD student to work on T cell tolerance in transgenic mice, I marched into the camp of ‘red genetics’ with banners flying.

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Acknowledgements

This article is dedicated to the memory of Bruno Kyewski. I thank all the members of my team who have worked with me over the years and apologize to those who embarked on projects that actually got less exciting when things stopped falling into place.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Immunology, Biomedical Center Munich, Faculty of Medicine, LMU Munich, Planegg-Martinsried, Germany

    Ludger Klein

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  1. Ludger Klein
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Correspondence to Ludger Klein.

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Klein, L. Recollections of the discovery of promiscuous antigen expression in mTECs. Nat Immunol 21, 1303–1305 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-020-0771-9

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