{"doi":"10.3389/fimmu.2020.01216","title":"Novel MHC-Independent αβTCRs Specific for CD48, CD102, and CD155 Self-Proteins and Their Selection in the Thymus","abstract":"MHC-independent αβTCRs (TCRs) recognize conformational epitopes on native self-proteins and arise in mice lacking both MHC and CD4/CD8 coreceptor proteins. Although naturally generated in the thymus, these TCRs resemble re-engineered therapeutic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells in their specificity for MHC-independent ligands. Here we identify naturally arising MHC-independent TCRs reactive to three native self-proteins (CD48, CD102, and CD155) involved in cell adhesion. We report that naturally arising MHC-independent TCRs require high affinity TCR-ligand engagements in the thymus to signal positive selection and that high affinity positive selection generates a peripheral TCR repertoire with limited diversity and increased self-reactivity. We conclude that the affinity of TCR-ligand engagements required to signal positive selection in the thymus inversely determines the diversity and self-tolerance of the mature TCR repertoire that is selected.","journal":"Frontiers in Immunology","year":2020,"id":90056,"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":8,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9512,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":450767,"name":"Ingrid Saba","orcid":"0000-0003-0851-421X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":271697,"name":"Jinghua Lu","orcid":"0000-0001-7169-1687","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":450768,"name":"Abhisek Bhattacharya","orcid":"0000-0002-1667-7169","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":454552,"name":"Xuguang Tai","orcid":"0000-0001-5322-7127","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":455657,"name":"Terry I. Guinter","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279353,"name":"Britta Engelhardt","orcid":"0000-0003-3059-9846","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":455658,"name":"Amala Alag","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":455659,"name":"Mirelle Rojano","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":455660,"name":"Jennifer M. Ashe","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":454553,"name":"Ken‐ichi Hanada","orcid":"0000-0003-2959-1257","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":454554,"name":"James C. Yang","orcid":"0000-0001-8935-5008","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":271698,"name":"Peter D. Sun","orcid":"0000-0003-0475-1891","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":450769,"name":"Alfred Singer","orcid":"0000-0002-6780-5108","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":450766,"name":"François Van Laethem","orcid":"0000-0002-0417-0715","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":44,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T22:02:48.683291Z","pmid":"32612609","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":[]}