Fig. 4. Comparison and characterization of NP_105–113-B*07:02-specific TCRs from acute and convalescent cases of COVID-19.

a, Similarity scores from pairwise comparisons between TCRs from prepandemic individuals (237 TCRs) and 85 unique clonotypes from convalescent patients with COVID-19 (38 mild TCRs versus 47 severe TCRs; P < 2.20 × 10⁻16). b, Proportion of acute and convalescent TCRs from patients with mild and severe COVID-19 found in the same GLIPH2 convergence groups as TCRs from 12 healthy donors (from a total of 738 TCRs from 12 mild patients, 133 TCRs from 7 severe patients and 261 TCRs from healthy individuals in 264 NP_105–113-B*07:02-predicted convergence groups; mild versus severe: P < 2.20 × 10⁻¹⁶). Each dot on the graph represents a percentage for mild/severe TCRs found in a single convergence group. c, Breakdown of CD8⁺ T cell subtypes of T cells with predicted NP_105–113-B*07:02 specificity from one HLA-B7*07:02-positive donor (8 cells) and HLA-B*07:02-positive patients with COVID-19 at acute stage (130 cells from 17 patients with COVID-19). TCM, T central memory; TEFF, T effector; TEM, T effector memory; TEMRA, T effector memory re-expressing CD45RA. For all box plots, the lower and upper hinges represent the 25–75th percentiles, the central line represents the median, and the whiskers extend to maximum and minimum values that are no greater than 1.5× the IQR. The Mann–Whitney U-test was used for analysis and the two-tailed P value was calculated: ****P < 0.0001.