PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Robins, Harlan S.
AU  - Srivastava, Santosh K.
AU  - Campregher, Paulo V.
AU  - Turtle, Cameron J.
AU  - Andriesen, Jessica
AU  - Riddell, Stanley R.
AU  - Carlson, Christopher S.
AU  - Warren, Edus H.
TI  - Overlap and Effective Size of the Human CD8<sup>+</sup> T Cell Receptor Repertoire
AID  - 10.1126/scitranslmed.3001442
DP  - 2010 Sep 01
TA  - Science Translational Medicine
PG  - 47ra64--47ra64
VI  - 2
IP  - 47
4099  - http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/2/47/47ra64.short
4100  - http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/2/47/47ra64.full
AB  - Diversity in T lymphocyte antigen receptors is generated by somatic rearrangement of T cell receptor (TCR) genes and is concentrated within the third complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) of each chain of the TCR heterodimer. We sequenced the CDR3 regions from millions of rearranged TCR β chain genes in naïve and memory CD8+ T cells of seven adults. The CDR3 sequence repertoire realized in each individual is strongly biased toward specific Vβ-Jβ pair utilization, dominated by sequences containing few inserted nucleotides, and drawn from a defined subset comprising less than 0.1% of the estimated 5 × 1011 possible sequences. Surprisingly, the overlap in the naïve CD8+ CDR3 sequence repertoires of any two of the individuals is ~7000-fold larger than predicted and appears to be independent of the degree of human leukocyte antigen matching.