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The Earliest Thymic Progenitors in Adults Are Restricted to T, NK, and Dendritic Cell Lineage and Have a Potential to Form More Diverse TCR Chains than Fetal Progenitors¹

Min Lu^*,, Risa Tayu^,, Tomokatsu Ikawa, Kyoko Masuda^*, Isamu Matsumoto, Hideo Mugishima, Hiroshi Kawamoto^* and Yoshimoto Katsura^2,*,

^* Laboratory for Lymphocyte Development, RIKEN Research Center for Allergy and Immunology, Yokohama, Japan; Division of Cell Regeneration and Transplantation, Advanced Medical Research Center, Nihon University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan; Department of Biochemistry, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan; and Department of Immunology, Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

T cell progenitors in the adult thymus (AT) are not well characterized. In the present study, we show that the earliest progenitors in the murine AT are, like those in fetal thymus (FT), unable to generate B or myeloid cells, but still retain the ability to generate NK cells and dendritic cells. However, AT progenitors are distinct from those in FT or fetal liver, in that they are able to produce 100 times larger numbers of T cells than progenitors in fetuses. Such a capability to generate a large number of T cells was mainly attributed to their potential to extensively proliferate before the TCR chain gene rearrangement. We propose that the AT is colonized by T/NK/dendritic cell tripotential progenitors with much higher potential to form diversity in TCR chains than FT progenitors.

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The JI 2005 175: 5565-5566. [Full Text]  

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