From the ‡Department of Pathology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts 01605.
§Mass Spectrometry Facility, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts 01545.
Mol Cell Proteomics. 2019 Mar;18(3):490-503. doi: 10.1074/mcp.RA118.000956. Epub 2018 Dec 20.
Presentation of antigenic peptides on MHC-II molecules is essential for tolerance to self and for initiation of immune responses against foreign antigens. DO (HLA-DO in humans, H2-O in mice) is a nonclassical MHC-II protein that has been implicated in control of autoimmunity and regulation of neutralizing antibody responses to viruses. These effects likely are related to a role of DO in selecting MHC-II epitopes, but previous studies examining the effect of DO on presentation of selected CD4 T cell epitopes have been contradictory. To understand how DO modulates MHC-II antigen presentation, we characterized the full spectrum of peptides presented by MHC-II molecules expressed by DO-sufficient and DO-deficient antigen-presenting cells and using quantitative mass spectrometry approaches. We found that DO controlled the diversity of the presented peptide repertoire, with a subset of peptides presented only when DO was expressed. Antigen-presenting cells express another nonclassical MHC-II protein, DM, which acts as a peptide editor by preferentially catalyzing the exchange of less stable MHC-II peptide complexes, and which is inhibited when bound to DO. Peptides presented uniquely in the presence of DO were sensitive to DM-mediated exchange, suggesting that decreased DM editing was responsible for the increased diversity. DO-deficient mice mounted CD4 T cell responses against wild-type antigen-presenting cells, but not vice versa, indicating that DO-dependent alterations in the MHC-II peptidome could be recognized by circulating T cells. These data suggest that cell-specific and regulated expression of HLA-DO serves to fine-tune MHC-II peptidomes, in order to enhance self-tolerance to a wide spectrum of epitopes while allowing focused presentation of immunodominant epitopes during an immune response.
抗原肽在 MHC-II 分子上的呈递对于自身耐受和对外源抗原免疫反应的启动至关重要。DO(人类中的 HLA-DO,小鼠中的 H2-O)是一种非经典 MHC-II 蛋白,它与自身免疫的控制和中和抗体对病毒的反应的调节有关。这些效应可能与 DO 在选择 MHC-II 表位中的作用有关,但以前研究检查 DO 对选定 CD4 T 细胞表位呈递的影响一直存在矛盾。为了了解 DO 如何调节 MHC-II 抗原呈递,我们使用定量质谱方法表征了 DO 充足和 DO 缺乏的抗原呈递细胞表达的 MHC-II 分子呈递的完整肽谱。我们发现 DO 控制了呈递肽库的多样性,其中一部分肽仅在表达 DO 时才呈现。抗原呈递细胞表达另一种非经典 MHC-II 蛋白 DM,它通过优先催化不太稳定的 MHC-II 肽复合物的交换起肽编辑作用,并且当与 DO 结合时被抑制。仅在存在 DO 时呈现的肽对 DM 介导的交换敏感,这表明 DM 编辑的减少是导致多样性增加的原因。DO 缺乏的小鼠对野生型抗原呈递细胞产生 CD4 T 细胞反应,但反之则不然,这表明由 DO 依赖性改变引起的 MHC-II 肽组可以被循环 T 细胞识别。这些数据表明,HLA-DO 的细胞特异性和调节表达可用于微调 MHC-II 肽组,以增强对广泛表位的自身耐受性,同时在免疫反应期间允许针对免疫显性表位的集中呈递。