Dynamics of recent thymic emigrants in young adult mice

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Abstract

The peripheral naive T-cell pool is generally thought to consist of a subpopulation of recent thymic emigrants (RTEs) and a subpopulation of mature naive (MN) T cells with different dynamics. Thymus transplantation and adoptive transfer studies in mice have provided contradicting results, with some studies suggesting that RTEs are relatively short-lived cells, while another study suggested that RTEs have a survival advantage. We here estimate the death rates of RTE and MN T cells by performing both thymus transplantations and deuterium labeling experiments in mice of at least 12 weeks old, an age at which the size of the T-cell pool has stabilized. For CD4++ T cells, we found the total loss rate from the RTE compartment (by death and maturation) to be fourfold faster than that of MN T cells. We estimate the death rate of CD4+ RTE to be 0.046 per day, which is threefold faster than the total loss rate from the MN T-cell compartment. For CD8+ T cells, we found no evidence for kinetic differences between RTE and MN T cells. Thus, our data support the notion that in young adult mice, CD4+ RTE are relatively short-lived cells within the naive CD4++ T-cell pool.

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van Hoeven, V., Drylewicz, J., Westera, L., den Braber, I., Mugwagwa, T., Tesselaar, K., … de Boer, R. J. (2017). Dynamics of recent thymic emigrants in young adult mice. Frontiers in Immunology, 8(AUG). https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2017.00933

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