2012/07/24 by Hanjie Li, Congting Ye, Guoli Ji +10 · 3 citations
Immunology and Microbiology · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #T-cell and B-cell Immunology #DNA Repair Mechanisms #Immune Cell Function and Interaction
paper · doi:10.4049/jimmunol.1102087
Overlap of TCR repertoires among individuals provides the molecular basis for public T cell responses. By deep-sequencing the TCRβ repertoires of CD4+CD8+ thymocytes from three individual mice, we observed that a substantial degree of TCRβ overlap, comprising ∼10-15% of all unique amino acid sequences and ∼5-10% of all unique nucleotide sequences across any two individuals, is already present at this early stage of T cell development. The majority of TCRβ sharing between individual thymocyte repertoires could be attributed to the process of convergent recombination, with additional contributions likely arising from recombinatorial biases; the role of selection during intrathymic development was negligible. These results indicate that the process of TCR gene recombination is the major determinant of clonotype sharing between individuals.