RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Overlap and Effective Size of the Human CD8+ T Cell Receptor Repertoire JF Science Translational Medicine FD American Association for the Advancement of Science SP 47ra64 OP 47ra64 DO 10.1126/scitranslmed.3001442 VO 2 IS 47 A1 Robins, Harlan S. A1 Srivastava, Santosh K. A1 Campregher, Paulo V. A1 Turtle, Cameron J. A1 Andriesen, Jessica A1 Riddell, Stanley R. A1 Carlson, Christopher S. A1 Warren, Edus H. YR 2010 UL http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/2/47/47ra64.abstract 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.