RESEARCH ARTICLE Notch-induced endoplasmic reticulum- associated degradation governs mouse thymocyte bÀselection Xia Liu1,2†, Jingjing Yu1,2†, Longyong Xu1,2†, Katharine Umphred-Wilson3†, Fanglue Peng1,2, Yao Ding1,2, Brendan M Barton3, Xiangdong Lv1, Michael Y Zhao1, Shengyi Sun4, Yuning Hong5, Ling Qi6, Stanley Adoro3*, Xi Chen1,2* 1Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, United States; 2Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center and Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, United States; 3Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, United States; 4Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Wayne State University, Detroit, United States; 5Department of Chemistry and Physics, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; 6Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, United States Abstract Signals from the pre-T cell receptor and Notch coordinately instruct b-selection of CD4–CD8–double negative (DN) thymocytes to generate ab T cells in the thymus. However, how these signals ensure a high-fidelity proteome and safeguard the clonal diversification of the pre- *For correspondence: selection TCR repertoire given the considerable translational activity imposed by b-selection is
[email protected] (SA); largely unknown. Here, we identify the endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-associated degradation (ERAD)
[email protected] (XC) machinery as a critical proteostasis checkpoint during b-selection. Expression of the SEL1L-HRD1 †These authors contributed complex, the most conserved branch of ERAD, is directly regulated by the transcriptional activity of equally to this work the Notch intracellular domain. Deletion of Sel1l impaired DN3 to DN4 thymocyte transition and ab Competing interests: The severely impaired mouse T cell development.