Department of Immunology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, 3584EA, The Netherlands.
Immunity. 2012 Feb 24;36(2):288-97. doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2012.02.006.
Parallels between T cell kinetics in mice and men have fueled the idea that a young mouse is a good model system for a young human, and an old mouse, for an elderly human. By combining in vivo kinetic labeling using deuterated water, thymectomy experiments, analysis of T cell receptor excision circles and CD31 expression, and mathematical modeling, we have quantified the contribution of thymus output and peripheral naive T cell division to the maintenance of T cells in mice and men. Aging affected naive T cell maintenance fundamentally differently in mice and men. Whereas the naive T cell pool in mice was almost exclusively sustained by thymus output throughout their lifetime, the maintenance of the adult human naive T cell pool occurred almost exclusively through peripheral T cell division. These findings put constraints on the extrapolation of insights into T cell dynamics from mouse to man and vice versa.
小鼠 T 细胞动力学与人类之间的相似性促使人们认为，年轻小鼠是年轻人类的良好模型系统，而老年小鼠则是老年人类的良好模型系统。通过结合使用氘水进行体内动力学标记、胸腺切除术实验、T 细胞受体切除环和 CD31 表达分析以及数学建模，我们已经量化了胸腺输出和外周幼稚 T 细胞分裂对维持小鼠和人类 T 细胞的贡献。衰老对小鼠和人类幼稚 T 细胞的维持产生了根本不同的影响。尽管小鼠的幼稚 T 细胞池在其整个生命周期中几乎完全依赖于胸腺输出，但成人人类幼稚 T 细胞池的维持几乎完全通过外周 T 细胞分裂实现。这些发现限制了将从小鼠到人类的 T 细胞动力学的见解推断出来，反之亦然。
