Analysis of autoreactive type one diabetes contributory CD8 T-cell frequencies in Nfkbid deficient NOD mice.

Thymic negative selection is an important regulatory process for selecting against autoreactive T-cells, a process likely defective in many type one diatebes (TID) patients. Nfkbid, a gene highly expressed in NOD TID mouse models compared to the disease resistant B6.H2g7 control strain, has previously been associated with a defective negative selection process. We hypothesized that decreasing Nfkbid leads to a decrease in the frequency of autoreactive CD8 T-cells in NOD mouse peripheral lymphoid tissue. We utilized MimA2 and NRP-v7 MHC class I tetramers to quantify the number of autoreactive AI4-like and NY8.3-like T-cells in the thymus, lymph nodes, and peripheral lymphocytes of three variant mice models: NOD, NOD.Nfkbid and NOD.Nfkbid. We did not find statistical differences in how variations of Nfkbid expression impacts the presence of autoreactive T-cells in the periphery of non-TCR transgenic NOD mice; however, this does not negate the relevance of Nfkbid to thymic negative selection and TID. In future we can increase our sample sizes as well as further explore the transgenic TCR mouse models available to us