Extrathymic and thymic origin of murine IEL: are most IEL in euthymic mice derived from the thymus?

Although an abundance of literature supports the hypothesis that murine intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL) can develop extrathymically, whether most IEL in euthymic mice ar extrathymically derived is unknown. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the development of most IEL in euthymic mice is influenced either directly or indirectly by the thymus. While some evidence suggests that the thymus can influence the extrathymic development of IEL through time-derived factors, clearly a substantial portion (if not most) of the IEL in euthymic mice are derived directly from the thymus. The ability of the thymus to generate IEL depends on the age of the thymus, as fetal/neonatal thymus up to approximately 2 weeks of age generates a totally different subset of IEL than the adult thymus. These results suggest that the IEL generated from the fetal early neonatal thymus recognize a different antigen than the IEL generated from the adult thymus. The former probably recognizes self-antigen and the later recognizes bacterial antigen.