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β versus 
lineage commitment revealed by single-cell analysis
CORRESPONDENCE Harald von Boehmer: harald_von_boehmer{at}dfci.harvard.edu
β and 
T cell lineages develop in the thymus from a common precursor. It is unclear at which stage of development commitment to these lineages takes place and in which way T cell receptor signaling contributes to the process. Recently, it was demonstrated that strong TCR signals favor lineage development, whereas weaker TCR signals promote β lineage fate. Two models have been proposed to explain these results. The first model suggests that commitment occurs after TCR expression and TCR signaling directly instructs lymphocytes to adopt one or the other lineage fate. The second model suggests that commitment occurs before TCR expression and that TCR signaling merely confirms the lineage choice. By tracing the fate of single T cell precursors, this study shows that there is no commitment to either the β or lineage before TCR expression and that modulation of TCR signaling in progeny of a single TCR-expressing cell changes lineage commitment.
, pre-TCR chain. A.I. Garbe's present address is TU Dresden, Medical Faculty, MTZ, Institute of Physiological Chemistry, 01307 Dresden, Germany.
A. Krueger's present address is Institute of Immunology (OE5240), Hannover Medical School, D-30625, Hannover, Germany.
© 2008 Kreslavsky et al. This article is distributed under the terms of an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike–No Mirror Sites license for the first six months after the publication date (see http://www.jem.org/misc/terms.shtml). After six months it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).
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