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. 2022 Apr 8;13:885280. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.885280

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Copyright © 2022 Wang and Zúñiga-Pflücker

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Schematic depiction of T cell development in the thymus. Early thymic progenitors (ETP), arriving from the bone marrow, seed the thymus and receive Notch signals from thymic epithelial cells (TECs) to differentiate into CD4^-CD8^- double negative (DN) T-lineage cells. DN cells that have undergone successful V(D)J rearrangement at TCRβ gene loci differentiate into CD4⁺CD8⁺ double positive (DP) cells. After completing TCRα rearrangements and successfully undergoing positive selection, DPs migrate to the thymus medullary region and are subjected to negative selections while DPs that fail positive selection will be programmed for apoptosis. Cells that successfully passed these checkpoints will exit the thymus as CD4 or CD8 single positive (SP) T cells.