Knocking down , the intron-nested gene, unveils interrelated T cell activation functions in mouse.

We previously reported (), a novel gene nested in intron 6 of the mouse gene. is involved in several functions such as fertility and T cell development and its knockout leads to non-viable embryos. We also reported ISRAA's expression in lymphoid organs, particularly in the thymus CD T cells during all developmental stages. In addition, we showed that ISRAA is a binding partner of Fyn and Elf-1 and regulates the expression of T cell activation-related genes . In this paper, we report the generation and characterization of an constitutive knockout mouse. The histological study shows that mice exhibit thymus and spleen hyperplasia. derived T cells showed increased proliferation compared to the wild-type mice T cells. Moreover, gene expression analysis revealed a set of differentially expressed genes in the knockout and wild-type animals during thymus development (mostly genes of T cell activation pathways). Immunological phenotyping of the thymocytes and splenocytes of showed no difference with those of the wild-type. Moreover, we observed that knocking out the intron embedded gene does not affect mice fertility, thus does not disturb this function. The characterization of the mouse confirms the role ISRAA plays in the expression regulation of genes involved in T cell activation established . Taken together, our findings point toward a potential functional interrelation between the intron nested gene and the host gene in regulating T cell activation. This constitutively mice can be a good model to study T cell activation and to investigate the relationship between host and intron-nested genes.