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T Cells
Migrate from Thymus to the Periphery in Alternating Waves
By
From the * Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Unitè de Recherche Associée 1135, Université
Pierre et Marie Curie, 75005 Paris, France; The embryonic thymus is colonized by the influx of hemopoietic progenitors in waves. To
characterize the T cell progeny of the initial colonization waves, we used intravenous adoptive
transfer of bone marrow progenitors into congenic embryos. The experiments were performed
in birds because intravenous cell infusions can be performed more efficiently in avian than in
mammalian embryos. Progenitor cells, which entered the vascularized thymus via interlobular venules in the capsular region and capillaries located at the corticomedullary junction, homed
to the outer cortex to begin thymocyte differentiation. The kinetics of differentiation and emigration of the T cell progeny were analyzed for the first three waves of progenitors. Each progenitor wave gave rise to Department of Medical Microbiology, Turku University,
FIN-20520 Turku, Finland; § Division of Developmental and Clinical Immunology, Departments of
Medicine, Pediatrics, and Microbiology, University of Alabama, and Howard Hughes Medical
Institute, Birmingham, Alabama 35294; Basel Institute for Immunology, CH-4005 Basel,
Switzerland
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T cells 3 d earlier than 
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T cells. Although the flow of T cell migration from the thymus was uninterrupted, distinct colonization and differentiation kinetics
defined three successive waves of / and / T cells that depart sequentially the thymus en
route to the periphery. Each wave of precursors rearranged all three TCR V gene families,
but displayed a variable repertoire. The data indicate a complex pattern of repertoire diversification by the progeny of founder thymocyte progenitors.
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