Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Monitoring the T-Cell Receptor Repertoire at Single-Clone Resolution

2006; Public Library of Science; Volume: 1; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1371/journal.pone.0000055

1932-6203

Hendrik P. J. Bonarius, Frank Baas, Ester B. M. Remmerswaal, René A. W. van Lier, Ineke J. M. ten Berge, Paul P. Tak, Niek de Vries,

Immune Cell Function and Interaction

The adaptive immune system recognizes billions of unique antigens using highly variable T-cell receptors. The αβ T-cell receptor repertoire includes an estimated 106 different rearranged β chains per individual. This paper describes a novel micro-array based method that monitors the β chain repertoire with a resolution of a single T-cell clone. These T-arrays are quantitative and detect T-cell clones at a frequency of less than one T cell in a million, which is 2 logs more sensitive than spectratyping (immunoscope), the current standard in repertoire analysis. Using T-arrays we detected CMV-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell clones that expanded early after viral antigen stimulation in vitro and in vivo. This approach will be useful in monitoring individual T-cell clones in diverse experimental settings, and in identification of T-cell clones associated with infectious disease, autoimmune disease and cancer.