Discovery and Nomenclature
The antigen Thy-1 was the first T cell marker to be identified. Thy-1 was discovered by Reif and Allen in 1964 during a search for heterologous antisera against mouse leukemia cells, and was demonstrated by them to be present on murine thymocytes, on T lymphocytes, and on neuronal cells. It was originally named theta (θ) antigen, then Thy-1 (THYmocyte differentiation antigen 1) due to its prior identification in thymocytes (precursors of T cells in the thymus). The human homolog was isolated in 1980 as a 25kDa protein (p25) of T-lymphoblastoid cell line MOLT-3 binding with anti-monkey-thymocyte antisera. The discovery of Thy-1 in mice and humans led to the subsequent discovery of many other T cell markers, which is very significant to the field of immunology since T cells (along with B cells) are the major cellular components of the adaptive immune response.
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