Dynamics of Recent Thymic Emigrants in Young Adult Mice

The peripheral naive T-cell pool is generally thought to consist of a subpopulation of recent thymic emigrants (RTEs) and a subpopulation of mature naive (MN) T cells with different dynamics. Thymus transplantation and adoptive transfer studies in mice have provided contradicting results, with some studies suggesting that RTEs are relatively short-lived cells, while another study suggested that RTEs have a survival advantage. We here estimate the death rates of RTE and MN T cells by performing both thymus transplantations and deuterium labeling experiments in mice of at least 12 weeks old, an age at which the size of the T-cell pool has stabilized. For CD4(+) T cells, we found the total loss rate from the RTE compartment (by death and maturation) to be fourfold faster than that of MN T cells. We estimate the death rate of CD4(+) RTE to be 0.046 per day, which is threefold faster than the total loss rate from the MN T-cell compartment. For CD8(+) T cells, we found no evidence for kinetic differences between RTE and MN T cells. Thus, our data support the notion that in young adult mice, CD4(+) RTE are relatively short-lived cells within the naive CD4(+) T-cell pool.