Figure 5.
Effect of HSC genotype and age on thymic involution. (A) Thymic cellularity 12 months after reciprocal transplants between wt and Tgfb2+/- (het) mice (mean ± SEM, n = 3-5 mice from 3 separate transplantation experiments; *significantly different from het→het transplants). (B) Correlation between the fraction of naive (CD44lowCD45RB+) CD4 cells in the peripheral blood and thymic cellularity in the transplant recipients of panel A for which data were available (n = 18). (C) Effect of the age of reconstituting bone marrow cells on thymic cellularity 12 months after transplantation (mean ± SEM; n = 10 for recipients of bone marrow of aged mice; n = 7 for recipients of bone marrow from young mice).