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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Semin Hematol. 2016 Oct 19;54(1):33–38. doi: 10.1053/j.seminhematol.2016.10.003

Figure 1. T cell generation and maintenance during aging.

Figure 1

The thymus generates novel naïve T cells early in life, providing a diverse T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire. The maintenance of the naïve T cell pool during adult life is entirely dependent on homeostatic proliferation. In old age, aberrant homeostatic proliferation results in contraction of the T cell pool (especially CD8+ T cells), decrease in TCR repertoire diversity and generation of virtual memory cells (VM).