Miller J F
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Victoria, Australia.
Annu Rev Immunol. 1999;17:1-17. doi: 10.1146/annurev.immunol.17.1.1.
Work done in the late 1950s and in the 1960s revealed the role of the thymus in virus-induced leukemia in mice. Thymectomizing mice at birth to test whether the virus first multiplied in thymus tissue and then spread elsewhere ultimately led to the conclusion that the thymus was essential to the normal development of the immune system. Subsequent testing to try to understand how the thymus contributes to the pool of immunocompetent lymphocytes opened a new chapter in immunology and required a reappraisal of many immunological phenomena and an understanding of the molecular interactions that take place during cell-to-cell interactions.
20世纪50年代末和60年代所做的研究揭示了胸腺在小鼠病毒诱导白血病中的作用。通过在小鼠出生时进行胸腺切除以测试病毒是否首先在胸腺组织中增殖然后扩散到其他部位，最终得出结论：胸腺对于免疫系统的正常发育至关重要。随后为了理解胸腺如何促进免疫活性淋巴细胞库的形成而进行的测试，开启了免疫学的新篇章，并且需要重新评估许多免疫现象以及理解细胞间相互作用过程中发生的分子相互作用。
