Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2014 Feb 4:5:13.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2014.00013. eCollection 2014.

Theories and quantification of thymic selection

Andrew J Yates  1
Affiliations
Review

Theories and quantification of thymic selection

Andrew J Yates. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

The peripheral T cell repertoire is sculpted from prototypic T cells in the thymus bearing randomly generated T cell receptors (TCR) and by a series of developmental and selection steps that remove cells that are unresponsive or overly reactive to self-peptide-MHC complexes. The challenge of understanding how the kinetics of T cell development and the statistics of the selection processes combine to provide a diverse but self-tolerant T cell repertoire has invited quantitative modeling approaches, which are reviewed here.

Keywords: T cells; mathematical modeling; repertoire selection; theoretical biology; thymic selection.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Stages in the development of CD4 and CD8 T cells in the thymus.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Paul WE, editor. Fundamental Immunology. 6 ed Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; (2008).
    1. Starr TK, Jameson SC, Hogquist KA. Positive and negative selection of T cells. Annu Rev Immunol (2003) 21:139–7610.1146/annurev.immunol.21.120601.141107 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Moran AE, Hogquist KA. T-cell receptor affinity in thymic development. Immunology (2012) 135(4):261–710.1111/j.1365-2567.2011.03547.x - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Petrie HT, Livak F, Schatz DG, Strasser A, Crispe IN, Shortman K. Multiple rearrangements in T cell receptor alpha chain genes maximize the production of useful thymocytes. J Exp Med (1993) 178(2):615–2210.1084/jem.178.2.615 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Scollay RG, Butcher EC, Weissman IL. Thymus cell migration. Quantitative aspects of cellular traffic from the thymus to the periphery in mice. Eur J Immunol (1980) 10(3):210–810.1002/eji.1830100310 - DOI - PubMed