The Institute for Immunology and the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-3900, USA.
Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2010 Dec;22(6):865-71. doi: 10.1016/j.ceb.2010.08.003.
The thymus is an organ vital to proper T cell development, and the regulation of cell survival and death contributes significantly to its efficient function. Vital to many of the developmental processes that occur in the thymus, control over cell survival and death is orchestrated by several signaling processes. In this review, we focus on the regulation of death in early thymocytes known as CD4/CD8 double negative cells, including the roles of interleukin-7 and Bcl-2 family members in this developmental stage. We next consider the survival and death of later thymocytes that express both CD4 and CD8, the 'double-positive' thymocytes. These findings are discussed within the context of recent studies demonstrating the existence of caspase-independent cell death pathways.
胸腺是对 T 细胞发育至关重要的器官，细胞存活和死亡的调节对其有效功能有重要贡献。许多发生在胸腺中的发育过程都依赖于细胞存活和死亡的控制，而这种控制是由几个信号转导过程来协调的。在这篇综述中，我们重点介绍了称为 CD4/CD8 双阴性细胞的早期胸腺细胞中死亡的调节，包括白细胞介素-7 和 Bcl-2 家族成员在这个发育阶段的作用。接下来，我们考虑表达 CD4 和 CD8 的晚期胸腺细胞，即“双阳性”胸腺细胞的存活和死亡。这些发现是在最近的研究中证明存在 caspase 非依赖性细胞死亡途径的背景下讨论的。
