Cellularity of Thymic Epithelial Cells in the Postnatal Mouse

Abstract

The molecular and cellular biology of thymic epithelial cells (TECs) often relies on the analysis of TECs isolated in enzymatically digested single-cell suspensions derived from mouse thymus. Many independent studies have reported that the estimated cellularity of total TECs isolated from one adult mouse is on the order of up to 105. However, these numbers appear extremely small given that the cellularity of total thymocytes exceeds 108 and that TECs play multiple roles in thymocyte development and repertoire formation. In the present study, we aimed to measure the numbers of β5t-expressing cortical TECs and Aire-expressing medullary TECs in postnatal mouse thymus in situ without enzymatic digestion. The numbers of these TECs were manually counted in individual thymic sections and were three-dimensionally summed throughout the entire thymic lobes. The results show that the cellularity of total TECs in one 5-wk-old female mouse exceeds 106, containing ∼9 × 105 β5t+ cortical TECs and ∼1.1 × 106 Aire+ medullary TECs. These results suggest that the use of conventional enzymatic digestion methods for the isolation of TECs may have resulted in the underestimation of the cellularity, and possibly the biology, of TECs.