{"doi":"10.1172/jci.insight.151005","title":"NR4A family members regulate T cell tolerance to preserve immune homeostasis and suppress autoimmunity","abstract":"The NR4A family of orphan nuclear receptors (Nr4a1-3) plays redundant roles to establish and maintain Treg identity; deletion of multiple family members in the thymus results in Treg deficiency and a severe inflammatory disease. Consequently, it has been challenging to unmask redundant functions of the NR4A family in other immune cells. Here we use a competitive bone marrow chimera strategy, coupled with conditional genetic tools, to rescue Treg homeostasis and unmask such functions. Unexpectedly, chimeras harboring Nr4a1-/- Nr4a3-/- (double-knockout, DKO) bone marrow developed autoantibodies and a systemic inflammatory disease despite a replete Treg compartment of largely WT origin. This disease differs qualitatively from that seen with Treg deficiency and is B cell extrinsic. Negative selection of DKO thymocytes is profoundly impaired in a cell-intrinsic manner. Consistent with escape of self-reactive T cells into the periphery, DKO T cells with functional, phenotypic, and transcriptional features of anergy accumulated in chimeric mice. Nevertheless, we observed upregulation of genes encoding inflammatory mediators in anergic DKO T cells, and DKO T cells exhibited enhanced capacity for IL-2 production. These studies reveal cell-intrinsic roles for the NR4A family in both central and peripheral T cell tolerance and demonstrate that each is essential to preserve immune homeostasis.","journal":"JCI Insight","year":2021,"id":160016,"datarank":0.5495342469194471,"base_score":3.6635616461296463,"endowment":3.6635616461296463,"self_citation_contribution":0.5495342469194471,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5495342469194471,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":38,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.957,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":672164,"name":"Hailyn V. Nielsen","orcid":"0000-0002-0843-0617","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":673059,"name":"James L. Mueller","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":316845,"name":"Ravi Mandla","orcid":"0000-0002-0782-0138","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":672165,"name":"Julie Zikherman","orcid":"0000-0002-0873-192X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":672163,"name":"Ryosuke Hiwa","orcid":"0000-0001-6968-5712","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":67,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:44:43.908634Z","pmid":"34343134","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":[]}