Predictable alphabeta T-cell receptor selection toward an HLA-B*3501-restricted human cytomegalovirus epitope

Rebekah M Brennan1, John J Miles, Sharon L Silins

  • 1Queensland Institute of Medical Research, 300 Herston Road, Brisbane 4029, Australia.

Journal of Virology
|April 27, 2007
PubMed

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) elicits a very large burden on the immune system, with approximately one in ten T cells being reserved solely to manage this infection. However, information on the clonotypic composition of these vast T-cell populations is limited. In this study, we sequenced 116 T-cell receptor (TcR) alpha/beta-chains specific for the highly immunogenic HLA-B*3501-resticted epitope IPSINVHHY from the pp65 antigen. Interestingly, T cells recovered from all donors bore an identical or near-identical TRBV28/TRBJ1-4/TRAV17/TRAJ33 TcR. The ability to predict the responding alphabeta TcR repertoire before viral infection should prove a powerful tool for basic and clinical immunology.

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