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Updated: Apr 3, 2026

T and B Cell Receptor Immune Repertoire Analysis using Next-generation Sequencing
Published on: January 12, 2021
T-cell receptor repertoire of human peripheral CD161hiTRAV1-2+ MAIT cells revealed by next generation sequencing and
Kathrin Held1, Eduardo Beltrán1, Markus Moser2
1Institute of Clinical Neuroimmunology, Klinikum der Universität Muenchen, Munich, Germany.
Abstract:
Mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells are a T-cell subset that expresses a conserved TRAV1-2 (Vα7.2) T-cell receptor (TCR) chain and the surface marker CD161. They are involved in the defence against microbes as they recognise small organic molecules of microbial origin that are presented by the non-classical MHC molecule 1 (MR1). MAIT cells express a semi-restricted TCR α chain with TRAV1-2 preferentially linked to TRAJ33, TRAJ12, or TRAJ20 which pairs with a limited set of β chains. To investigate the TCR repertoire of human CD161(hi)TRAV1-2(+) T cells in depth we analysed the α and β chains of this T-cell subset by next generation sequencing. Concomitantly we analysed 132 paired α and β chains from single cells to assess the αβ pairing preferences. We found that the CD161(hi)TRAV1-2(+) TCR repertoire in addition to the typical MAIT TCRs further contains polyclonal elements reminiscent of classical αβ T cells.
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