The entry of the prothymocyte into the thymus after lethal irradiation and bone marrow transplantation. I. Seeding of bone marrow cells into the thymus.

Bone marrow (BM) cells arrive in the thymus of lethally irradiated mice as early as three hours after bone marrow transplantation (BMT). They can be recognized by labeling of the injected cells with Hoechst 33342 (direct homing assay). In order to relate the immigrated BM cells to thymocyte precursor cells, direct homing and thymus repopulation experiments were compared. It was shown that homing of BM cells depends on the time between lethal irradiation and BMT, while it was previously shown that thymus repopulation does not. In addition, thymic immigrants were smaller than precursor cells committed to the T cell limeage (prothymocytes) and their progenitors. A cell population obtained from normal BM cells and enriched in stem cells (purified stem cells) was previously shown to repopulate the thymus similarly as BM cells from mice pretreated in vivo with 5-fluorouracil (FUBM). Both cell suspension showed a delayed thymus repopulation when compared to normal BM. This is indicative for a depletion of prothymocytes in these cell suspensions. In the direct homing assay, however, it was found that relatively many cells from FUBM seeded into the thymus, while purified stem cells did not. These results indicate that most if not all donor cells that are present in the thymus at three hours after BMT are not thymocyte precursor cells.