CD4+ T cells promote immune responses against foreign Ags while actively suppressing responses against self Ags. To address how CD4+ T cells ensure self-tolerance, we focused on two CD4+ T helper cells specific for myelin basic protein (MBP). GP2.E5/R1 T cells recognized rat MBP (RMBP) as a partial agonist and mediated mild experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), whereas R2 T cells recognized RMBP with full efficacy and mediated severe EAE. GP2.E5/R1 T cells were more susceptible to anergy induction than R2 T cells. Anergic GP2.E5/R1 T cells lacked proliferative reactivity, but expressed both I-A glycoproteins and high levels of radioresistant APC activity. During induction of anergy, these T cells acquired the ability to present MBP. In a separate subsequent culture without further addition of Ag, anergic GP2.E5/R1 T cells elicited full proliferative and IL-2 production responses by R2 T cells. Unlike activations induced via irradiated splenocytes, irradiated anergic T cells elicited anergy in R2 T cells in the form of a postactivational phase of nonresponsiveness. Anergic GP2.E5/R1 T cells not only transferred anergy to pathogenic R2 T cells in vitro, but these anergic T cells also transferred resistance to EAE in Lewis rats subsequently challenged with guinea pig MBP in CFA. Antagonistic signaling by autologous RMBP was more tolerogenic than that of guinea pig MBP in both in vitro and in vivo models of infectious anergy. We conclude that in the presence of tolerogenic mAb, antagonistic signaling by a self protein elicited the coordinate expression of anergy and T cell-mediated APC activity as a mechanism for the genesis and spread of infectious tolerance.