The Role of the Thymus in Type I Diabetes.

Regulatory T lymphocytes play a major role in the protection from autoimmune pathology. Defects in immunosuppression mediated by these cells is therefore suspected to contribute to these diseases. This issue has very little been studied in humans.Regulatory T cells emigrated from the thymus will be isolated from the blood of patients and healthy controls. The repertoire of antigen-receptors will be analysed by high throughput sequencing and its diversity estimated using appropriate statistical models borrowed from ecology.