Fig. 4.

MAIT clonotype composition is altered during enteric fever. MAIT cells were sorted from frozen PBMCs from individuals challenged with S. Paratyphi A and diagnosed with enteric fever (pre-, mid-, and post-infection) and the TCRβ repertoire analyzed. a Representative clonotype tracking heatmap for a diagnosed individual (donor 1) showing top 100 clonotypes with hierarchical clustering on the left y-axis and the CDR3β sequences on the right y-axis. b Example shared clonotype abundance plots for diagnosed donor 1 and donor 4. The top five clonotypes shared pre- and post-infection are displayed. Orange indicates expanded clone (≥2-fold increase), blue indicates contracted clone (≥2-fold decrease) and yellow indicates a stable clone. c Graph summarizing the clonotype abundance plots, showing the proportion of the top five clones undergoing either contraction/expansion over time in healthy controls (n = 3) and diagnosed individuals (n = 6). Bars plotted as mean with error bars representing SEM. Statistical significance calculated using Student’s unpaired two-tailed t-test where *P < 0.05