Expression data from cortical thymic epithelial cells ectopically expressing Aire

Aire in medullary thymic epithelial cells plays an essential role in the negative selection through expression of broad arrays of tissue-restricted antigens. We asked whether Aire could also activate the expression of tissue-restricted antigens in cortical thymic epithelial cells. We established a semi-knockin strain of NOD-background mice expressing Aire under control of the promoter of β5t, a thymoproteasome expressed exclusively in the cortex. We extracted RNA from cortical thymic epithelial cells ectopically expressing Aire and hybridization was performed on Affymetrix. microarrays.