The thymus of Nu/+ mice

At one month, the thymus weight of NMRI mice heterozygous for the Nu gene was lower than that of the wild type. However, the thymic structure was normal and no significant anomalies at the ultrastructurallevel could be found either in epithelial cells or in thymocytes. Stereologic data showed that the loss of weight was only due to a decrease of the lymphoid population, whereas the absolute number of epithelial cells was unmodified. Several hypotheses that could explain the reduced number of thymocytes were discussed.