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From the U345 Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale, Institut Necker, 156, 75730 Paris Cedex 15, France
We investigated the role of continuous thymus output in the shaping of mature T cell repertoires by studying in vivo the survival of a single clone of mature Rag2-deficient T cell receptor (TCR) transgenic cells at different stages of activation in the absence or presence of thymus
export. In the absence of thymus export, TCR-transgenic lymphocytes survived indefinitely in
the peripheral pools. When new lymphocytes were produced in the thymus and migrated to
the periphery, resident memory T cells were maintained in constant numbers, whereas naive
and self-reactive T cells were replaced by recent thymus migrants.
This T cell renewal ensured both the efficiency of recall responses to antigens as memory T
cells persisted independently of thymus output, and the capacity of the immune system to respond to new antigen stimulation as the naive T cell pool was continuously renewed. Our results also indicate that thymus export is required to control the number of self-reactive peripheral T cells that may invade the peripheral pools if thymus output fails.
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