Abstract
Many viral epitope specific T cell receptors (TCRs) in MHC-matched individuals have been demonstrated to involve conserved amino acid motifs in β chain complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3). However, it is not sure whether the conserved motifs can also be found in TCR α chain. In previous studies, we developed a modified method to enlarge the percentage of cytomegalovirus (CMV) pp65 peptide-specific CD8+ T cells in PBMC by continuous peptide stimulation in vitro, which provides sufficient number of specific T cells for detection. In this study, we further analyzed the restrictive usage of TCR Vα and Vβ gene families and investigated the CDR3 gene sequence of pp65 peptide-specific CD8+ T cells. Analysis of CDR3 spectratypes suggested a restricted usage of TCR α chain AV8, AV12, AV21, AV31 families and TCR β chain BV3, BV14, BV21, BV23, BV11 families in donor CD8+ T cells stimulated by pp65 peptide. The sequences of these T cells involved similar sequence (TX) G (X) A in CDR3 region of TCR α chain and L (XT) G (X) A in TCR β chain.
Keywords: TCR, CDR3, CMV, pp65 peptide, CTL
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Glossary
- TCR
T-cell receptor
- CDR3
complementarity-determining region 3
- CTL
cytotoxic T lymphocyte
- PBMCs
peripheral blood mononuclear cells
- CMV
cytomegalovirus
- HLA
human leucocyte antigen
- FACS
fluorescence activated cell sorting
- BV
β chain variable gene segment
- BD
β chain diversity gene segment
- BJ
β chain joining gene segment
- N
N-region
- AV
α chain variable gene segment
- AJ
α chain joining gene segment