ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America1999
T cell receptor gene deletion circles identify recent thymic emigrants in the peripheral T cell pool.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 1999. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 172 citations in OpenAlex.
- Advancing Forensic Human Chronological Age Estimation: Biochemical, Genetic, and Epigenetic Approaches from the Last 15 Years: A Systematic Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Pooled it
- Early Thymectomy Is Associated With Long-Term Impairment of the Immune System: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in immunology · 2021Pooled it
- Association of CD4+ T-lymphocyte counts and new thymic emigrants in HIV-infected children during successful highly active antiretroviral therapy.The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology · 2006Trial
- Hepatitis B immunization of healthy elderly adults: relationship between naïve CD4+ T cells and primary immune response and evaluation of GM-CSF as an adjuvant.Journal of clinical immunology · 2001Trial
- The newfound relationship between extrachromosomal DNAs and excised signal circles.FEBS letters · 2026Review
- Article
- Diverging effects of tumor necrosis factor inhibitors and conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs on immunosenescence and inflammageing in rheumatoid arthritis: a cross-sectional analysis.Immunity & ageing : I & A · 2025Article
- Genetic reinstatement of RIG-I in chickens reveals insights into avian immune evolution and influenza interaction.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- Primary and secondary defects of the thymus.Immunological reviews · 2024Review
- Complete fatty degeneration of thymus associates with male sex, obesity and loss of circulating naïve CD8Immunity & ageing : I & A · 2023Article
- Characteristic differences in the abundance of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and intratumoral developing T cells in thymoma, with special reference to PD-1 expression.Cancer immunology, immunotherapy : CII · 2023Article
- Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Immunological Management of Chromosome 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome and Other Defects in Thymic Development.Journal of clinical immunology · 2023Review
- Blood levels of T-Cell Receptor Excision Circles (TRECs) provide an index of exposure to traumatic stress in mice and humans.Translational psychiatry · 2022Article
- Congenital Athymia: Genetic Etiologies, Clinical Manifestations, Diagnosis, and Treatment.Journal of clinical immunology · 2021Review
- Dynamics of thymus function and T cell receptor repertoire breadth in health and disease.Seminars in immunopathology · 2021Review
- Dysregulation of Systemic Immunity in Aging and Dementia.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2021Review
- Long-term robustness of a T-cell system emerging from somatic rescue of a genetic block in T-cell development.EBioMedicine · 2020Article
- Establishing Simultaneous T Cell Receptor Excision Circles (TREC) and K-Deleting Recombination Excision Circles (KREC) Quantification Assays and Laboratory Reference Intervals in Healthy Individuals of Different Age Groups in Hong Kong.Frontiers in immunology · 2020Article
- The ESC: The Dangerous By-Product of V(D)J Recombination.Frontiers in immunology · 2019Review
- A comparison of TRECs and flow cytometry for naive T cell quantification.Clinical and experimental immunology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Progenitor cells undergo T cell receptor (TCR) gene rearrangements during their intrathymic differentiation to become T cells. Rearrangements of the variable (V), diversity (D), and joining (J) segments of the TCR genes result in deletion of the intervening chromosomal DNA and the formation of circular episomes as a byproduct. Detection of these extrachromosomal excision circles in T cells located in the peripheral lymphoid tissues has been viewed as evidence for the existence of extrathymic T cell generation. Because all of the T cells in chickens apparently are generated in the thymus, we have employed this avian model to determine the fate of the V(D)J deletion circles. In normal animals we identified TCR Vgamma-Jgamma and Vbeta-Dbeta deletion circles in the blood, spleen, and intestines, as well as in the thymus. Thymectomy resulted in the gradual loss of these DNA deletion circles in all of the peripheral lymphoid tissues. A quantitative PCR analysis of Vgamma1-Jgamma1 and Vbeta1-Dbeta deletion circles in splenic gamma delta and Vbeta1(+) alphabeta T cells indicated that their numbers progressively decline after thymectomy with a half-life of approximately 2 weeks. Although TCR deletion circles therefore cannot be regarded as reliable indicators of in situ V(D)J rearrangement, measuring their levels in peripheral T cell samples can provide a valuable index of newly generated T cells entering the T cell pool.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.