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Nature Reviews Immunology 2, 888–897 (1 November 2002) | doi:10.1038/nri937

A positive look at double-negative thymocytes

Rod Ceredig & Ton Rolink

In some respects, our understanding of the cellular and molecular aspects of early T-cell differentiation is lagging behind that of B cells. Papers describing gene-knockout and reporter-transgenic mice in which thymocyte development is affected are often difficult to interpret. Progress in this field will be hampered unless a more detailed phenotypic and molecular analysis of progenitor thymocytes at the single-cell level is carried out.