O papel modulador do gene AIRE - capes

IntroductionThe thymus is an important organ implicated in the control of the mainfunctions of the immune system, providing a specialized microenvironment forthe maturation of thymocytes into positive TCR α/β T cells [1,2]. Organfunctioning begins early during fetal development, when immature thymocytesfrom the bone marrow reach the thymus and thousand of genes aresimultaneously modulated in both, with thymocytes and thymic stromacontributing to tolerance induction to self-antigens [3-8].Deciphering these genes is a complex task and DNA microarray technology,including mathematical and statistical algorithms for data analysis, such ashierarchical clustering [9] and significance analysis of microarrays (SAM) [10],have permitted the description of the modulation of several of such genes,featuring gene expression signatures [6-8,11] .Recent subsuming realized that most biochemical relationships among genesact in a synchronized fashion, involving many genes at once, in which one genecan exert many functions and one function can be exerted by many genes [12].Accordingly, a biological phenomenon needs to be interpreted as a wholebiochemical system and in order to grasp it, a comprehensive data set needs tobe produced.One example of a highly complex biochemical system is thymocytedifferentiation into mature T cells. It occurs within the fetal thymus and alldevelopmental stages are distinguishable by their expression of a combinationof clusters of differentiation (CD) cell-surface markers.This is a highly modulated phenomenon, whose central molecular machineryis formed by the recombinase complex (RAG-1 and RAG-2) directly implicated237