{"doi":"10.1101/2024.05.26.593976","title":"Identification and characterization of dietary antigens in oral tolerance","abstract":"Food antigens elicit immune tolerance through the action of regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the intestine. Although antigens that trigger common food allergies are known, the epitopes that mediate tolerance to most foods have not been described. Here, we identified murine T cell receptors specific for maize, wheat, and soy, and used expression cloning to de-orphan their cognate epitopes. All of the epitopes derive from seed storage proteins that are resistant to degradation and abundant in the edible portion of the plant. Multiple unrelated T cell clones were specific for an epitope at the C-terminus of 19 kDa alpha-zein, a protein from maize kernel. An MHC tetramer loaded with this antigen revealed that zein-specific T cells are predominantly Tregs localized to the intestine. These cells, which develop concurrently with weaning, constitute up to 2% of the peripheral Treg pool. Bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing revealed that these cells express higher levels of immunosuppressive markers and chemokines compared to other Tregs. These data suggest that immune tolerance to plant-derived foods is focused on a specific class of antigens with common features, and they reveal the functional properties of naturally occurring food-specific Tregs.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2024,"id":484434,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":10,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9559,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1327070,"name":"Ryan Kong","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1327071,"name":"E.A. Schulman","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1326617,"name":"Francis M. Chen","orcid":"0000-0002-6615-4155","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1028480,"name":"Rabi Upadhyay","orcid":"0000-0002-2154-0132","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1327072,"name":"Gabriela Romero‐Meza","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":90201,"name":"Dan R. Littman","orcid":"0000-0002-2850-8688","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":806326,"name":"Michael A. Fischbach","orcid":"0000-0002-9203-4026","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":808104,"name":"Kazuki Nagashima","orcid":"0000-0002-8593-136X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":235264,"name":"Elizabeth S. Sattely","orcid":"0000-0002-7352-859X","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":300831,"name":"Jamie Blum","orcid":"0000-0002-2168-5390","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":50,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:07:42.971417Z","pmid":"38853977","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}