Fig. 2

Autophagy and T cell development. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) arise in the bone marrow (BM) and migrate into the peripheral blood circulation as common lymphoid progenitors (CLP), finally reaching the thymus tissue. In the cortical section of the thymic lobule, double negative (DN) thymocytes lacking CD4 and CD8 develop into double positive (DP) cells. By interaction with peptide-loaded MHC (pMHC) complexes of cortical thymic epithelial cells (cTECs) ensuring the functionality upon MHC stimulation, thymocytes are positively selected. In the medullary part of the lobule, thymocytes are negatively selected by the interaction with pMHC ligands on medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTEC) and antigen-presenting cells (APC) to filter out and exclude self-reactive T-cells. After selection, thymocytes undergo commitment to the CD4, CD8, or NK-T lineage to single positive (SP) cells and are released into the bloodstream as naïve T cells. Depending on interaction with class II MHC complexes and cytokines milieu, CD4⁺ cells differentiate into further subsets. The figure is created with “BioRender.com”