Age-dependent loss of tolerance to an immunodominant epitope of glutamic acid decarboxylase in diabetic-prone RIP-B7/DR4 mice.

We have identified for the first time an age-dependent spontaneous loss of tolerance to two self-antigenic epitopes derived from putative diabetes-associated antigens glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD65) and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) in RIP-B7/DRB1*0404 HLA transgenic mice. Diabetic and older non-diabetic mice exhibited a proliferative response to an immunodominant epitope from GAD65 (555-567) and also from GFAP (240-252) but not from an immunogenic epitope from diabetes-associated islet-specific glucose-6-phosphatase catalytic subunit-related protein. The response to both of these self-antigens is not observed in young mice but is observed in older non-diabetic mice and is accompanied by histological evidence of insulitis in the absence of overt diabetes. Islet infiltrates in older non-diabetic mice and diabetic mice contain CD4(+)/FoxP3(+) cells and suggest the presence of a regulatory mechanism prior and during diabetic disease. Diabetes penetrance in RIP-B7/DR0404 mice is 23% with a mean onset age of 40 weeks and is similar to that reported for RIP-B7/DR0401 mice. A gender preference is observed in that 38% of female mice become diabetic compared to 8% of male mice.

Lymphopenia in the BB rat model of type 1 diabetes is due to a mutation in a novel immune-associated nucleotide (Ian)-related gene.

The BB (BioBreeding) rat is one of the best models of spontaneous autoimmune diabetes and is used to study non-MHC loci contributing to Type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes in the diabetes-prone BB (BBDP) rat is polygenic, dependent upon mutations at several loci. Iddm1, on chromosome 4, is responsible for a lymphopenia (lyp) phenotype and is essential to diabetes. In this study, we report the positional cloning of the Iddm1/lyp locus. We show that lymphopenia is due to a frameshift deletion in a novel member (Ian5) of the Immune-Associated Nucleotide (IAN)-related gene family, resulting in truncation of a significant portion of the protein. This mutation was absent in 37 other inbred rat strains that are nonlymphopenic and nondiabetic. The IAN gene family, lying within a tight cluster on rat chromosome 4, mouse chromosome 6, and human chromosome 7, is poorly characterized. Some members of the family have been shown to be expressed in mature T cells and switched on during thymic T-cell development, suggesting that Ian5 may be a key factor in T-cell development. The lymphopenia mutation may thus be useful not only to elucidate Type 1 diabetes, but also in the function of the Ian gene family as a whole.