Self-renewal of thymocytes in the absence of competitive precursor replenishment

Boehm, Thomas

doi:10.1084/jem.20121412

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Self-renewal of thymocytes in the absence of competitive precursor replenishment

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons190993

Boehm, Thomas
Department of Developmental Immunology, Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

https://rupress.org/jem/article/209/8/1397/53762/Self-renewal-of-thymocytes-in-the-absence-of
(Publisher version)

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Boehm, T. (2012). Self-renewal of thymocytes in the absence of competitive precursor replenishment. Journal of Experimental Medicine, 209, 1397-1400. doi:10.1084/jem.20121412.

Cite as: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002B-8CED-1

Abstract

Soon after transplantation of wild-type thymi into immunodeficient mice lacking functional T cell receptors, productive T cell development in the donor thymus ceases. This observation underlies one of the central dogmas of T cell biology: because thymocytes are seemingly short-lived, intrathymic T cell development depends on continuous import of lymphoid progenitors from the bone marrow. New work reinterprets the outcome of this classical experiment as being the result of competition for intrathymic niches specifically supporting the DN3 stage of early T cell development. Surprisingly, when this niche space is uncontested by immigrating host progenitors, development of T cells in the thymus grafts continues. These new findings suggest that early thymocytes do indeed have substantial self-renewing potential.