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Free keywords:
VITAMIN-B METABOLITES; MOLECULAR-BASIS; ALPHA-CHAIN; MR1; HETEROGENEITY;
RECOGNITION; DEFINES; CD161CD161; MAIT cells; T-cell receptor; T-cell receptor repertoire;
Abstract:
Mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells are a T-cell subset that expresses a conserved TRAV1-2 (V alpha 7.2) 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 alpha chain with TRAV1-2 preferentially linked to TRAJ33, TRAJ12, or TRAJ20 which pairs with a limited set of beta chains. To investigate the TCR repertoire of human CD161(hi)TRAV1-2(+) T cells in depth we analysed the alpha and beta chains of this T-cell subset by next generation sequencing. Concomitantly we analysed 132 paired alpha and beta chains from single cells to assess the alpha beta 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 alpha beta T cells. (C) 2015 American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
