title: Prothymocyte seeding in the thymus.
abstract: A major gap in our understanding of T lymphocyte development is the process of stem cell differentiation into T lymphocyte precursors. An important question is whether bone marrow-derived stem cells become committed to T lymphoid lineage within the bone marrow, or whether this occurs once cells have entered the microenvironment of the thymus. Attempts to identify a haemapoietic precursor of thymocytes in mice, a "prothymocyte", have involved cell transfer experiments involving isolated and selected populations of bone marrow stem cells, as well as transformed or continuous cell lines representing early stage in mouse T cell development. Current information on the properties of stem cells which can seed the thymus is reviewed in this paper, and the possibility that progenitor T cells may be identified by their expression of receptor(s) which localise them into the thymus is considered.
authors.affiliation: Developmental Haematology Group, John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT.
authors.forename: H C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: O'Neill
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D002460:Cell Line; D002465:Cell Movement; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000276:immunology; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology*; D013950:Thymus Gland / Q000166:cytology* / Q000276:immunology