State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Academy of Military Sciences, Beijing 100071, China.
Key Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine of Ministry of Education, Institute of Hematology, School of Medicine, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China.
Trends Immunol. 2021 Feb;42(2):165-175. doi: 10.1016/j.it.2020.12.004. Epub 2021 Jan 11.
Mammalian T cell development initiates from the migration of hematopoietic progenitors to the thymus, which undergo cell proliferation, T-lineage specification and commitment, as well as positive and negative selection. These processes are precisely controlled at multiple levels and have been intensively studied using gene-modified animal models and in vitro coculture systems. However, several long-standing questions, including the characterization of the rare but crucial progenitors/precursors and the molecular mechanisms underlying their fate decision, have been dampened because of cell scarcity and lack of appropriate techniques. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) makes it possible to investigate and resolve some of these questions, leading to new remarkable progress in identifying and characterizing early thymic progenitors and delineating the refined developmental trajectories of conventional and unconventional T cells.
哺乳动物 T 细胞的发育始于造血祖细胞向胸腺的迁移，在此过程中经历细胞增殖、T 细胞谱系特化和定型以及阳性和阴性选择。这些过程在多个层次上受到精确控制，并使用基因修饰的动物模型和体外共培养系统进行了深入研究。然而，由于细胞稀缺和缺乏适当的技术，一些长期存在的问题，包括稀有但至关重要的祖细胞/前体细胞的特征描述及其命运决定的分子机制，仍未得到解决。单细胞 RNA 测序（scRNA-seq）使得研究和解决这些问题成为可能，从而在鉴定和描述早期胸腺祖细胞以及描绘常规和非常规 T 细胞的精细化发育轨迹方面取得了新的显著进展。
