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Characterization of Thymic Settling Progenitors in the Mouse Embryo Using In Vivo and In Vitro Assays
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Published on: June 9, 2015

Many roads, one destination for T cell progenitors

Howard T Petrie1, Paul W Kincade

  • 1Scripps-Florida Research Institute, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA. hpetrie@scripps.edu

The Journal of Experimental Medicine
|June 29, 2005
PubMed

The thymus manufactures new T cells throughout life but contains no self-renewing potential. Instead, replenishment depends on recruitment of bone marrow-derived progenitors that circulate in the blood. Attempts to identify thymic-homing progenitors, and to assess the degree to which they are precommitted to the T cell lineage, have led to complex and sometimes conflicting results. As described here, this probably reflects the existence of multiple distinct types of T cell lineage progenitors as well as differences in individual experimental approaches.

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