Abstract

Doc number: 30

Abstract

Background: Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are required for proper maintenance of immunological self-tolerance and immune homeostasis. Folate receptor 4 (FR4) is expressed at high levels in transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β)-induced Tregs and natural Tregs. Moreover, antibody-mediated targeting of FR4 is sufficient to mediate Treg depletion.

Results: In this study, we describe a novel FR4 transcript variant, FR4D3 , in which exon 3 is deleted. The mRNA of FR4D3 encodes a FR4 variant truncated by 189 bp. FR4D3 was found to be predominantly expressed in CD4+ CD25+ Treg cells. Overexpression of FR4D3 in CD4+ CD25+ Treg cells in vitro stimulated proliferation, which may modulate the ability of these cells to bind and incorporate folic acid.

Conclusions: Our results suggested that high levels of FR4D3 may be critical to support the substantial proliferative capacity of Treg cells.

Details

Title
A novel splice variant of folate receptor 4 predominantly expressed in regulatory T cells
Author
Tian, Yi; Wu, Guoqiang; Xing, Jun-Chao; Tang, Jun; Zhang, Yi; Huang, Ze-Min; Jia, Zheng-Cai; Zhao, Ren; Tian, Zhi-Qiang; Wang, Shu-Feng; Chen, Xiao-Ling; Wang, Li; Wu, Yu-Zhang; Ni, Bing
Pages
30
Publication year
2012
Publication date
2012
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
14712172
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2172-13-30
ProQuest document ID
1029864135
Copyright
© 2012 Tian et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.