Question: How do lymphocytes mature?

Laura Garcia Ibanez answered on 9 Mar 2015:

B lymphocytes mature in the bone marrow and T lymphocytes mature in the thymus and bone marrow. Lymphocyte development is not really my area of expertise, but briefly I think I can explain. In the bone marrow there are signals that make undifferenciated progenitors take the route to produce lymphocytes. This signals are chemokines and cytokines mainly, which are soluble proteins that can diffuse through the body. When a undifferenciated cell “sees” one of these proteins this causes intracellular signals that modify the genes that are expressed by the cell. When the gene expression profile is modified this translates into a more differenciated cell such as lymphocytes.