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The thymus (pl.: thymuses or thymi) is a specialized primary lymphoid organ of the immune system.Within the thymus, thymus cell lymphocytes or T cells mature. T cells are critical to the adaptive immune system, where the body adapts to specific foreign invaders.
The remaining cells exit the thymus as mature naive T cells, also known as recent thymic emigrants. [13] This process is an important component of central tolerance and serves to prevent the formation of self-reactive T cells that are capable of inducing autoimmune diseases in the host.
Thymic epithelial cells (TECs) are specialized cells with high degree of anatomic, phenotypic and functional heterogeneity that are located in the outer layer (epithelium) of the thymic stroma. The thymus , as a primary lymphoid organ , mediates T cell development and maturation.
In 1989, two scientific groups came up with the hypothesis that the thymus expresses genes which are in the periphery, strictly expressed by specific tissues (e.g.: Insulin produced by β cells of the pancreas) to subsequently present these so-called "tissue-restricted antigens" (TRAs) from almost all parts of the body to developing T cells in order to test which TCRs recognize self-tissues ...
Cortical thymic epithelial cells (cTECs) form unique parenchyma cell population of the thymus which critically contribute to the development of T cells. Thymus tissue is compartmentalized into cortex and medulla and each of these two compartments comprises its specific thymic epithelial cell subset. cTECs reside in the outer part- cortex, which ...
Through the action of AIRE, medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTEC) express major proteins from elsewhere in the body (so called "tissue-restricted antigens" - TRA) and T cells that respond to those proteins are eliminated through cell death . Thus AIRE drives negative selection of self-recognizing T cells. [7]
During this time they undergo final maturational changes, and then exit the thymus using S1P and CCR7. Upon entry to the peripheral bloodstream, the cells are considered mature T cells, and not thymocytes. Negative selection is not 100% effective, some autoreactive T cells escape thymic censorship, and are released into the circulation.
In immunology, a naive T cell (T h 0 cell) is a T cell that has differentiated in the thymus, and successfully undergone the positive and negative processes of central selection in the thymus. Among these are the naive forms of helper T cells ( CD4 + ) and cytotoxic T cells ( CD8 + ).