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A developmental look at thymus organogenesis: where do the non-hematopoietic cells in the thymus come from?

Nancy R Manley1, C Clare Blackburn

  • 1Department of Genetics, B420A Life Sciences Building, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA. nmanley@arches.uga.edu

Current Opinion in Immunology
|March 14, 2003
PubMed

The origins of the non-hematopoietic cell types that comprise the thymic stroma remain a topic of considerable controversy. Three recent studies, using lineage analysis and other methods to determine the developmental potential of specific cell types within the thymus, have provided strong evidence of a single endodermal origin for all thymic epithelial cells. Together with other investigations that merge immunological and developmental biology approaches, these studies have suggested a new model of thymus organogenesis, and have begun to uncover the molecular pathways that control this process.

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