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.