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Longitudinal high-throughput TCR repertoire profiling reveals the dynamics of T-cell memory formation after mild COVID-19 infection

2021; eLife Sciences Publications Ltd; Volume: 10; Linguagem: Inglês

10.7554/elife.63502

2050-084X

Anastasia A. Minervina, Ekaterina A. Komech, Aleksei Titov, Meriem Bensouda Koraichi, Elisa Rosati, Ilgar Z. Mamedov, André Franke, Grigory A. Efimov, Dmitriy M. Chudakov, Thierry Mora, Aleksandra M. Walczak, Yuri B. Lebedev, Mikhail V. Pogorelyy,

Long-Term Effects of COVID-19

COVID-19 is a global pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. T cells play a key role in the adaptive antiviral immune response by killing infected cells and facilitating the selection of virus-specific antibodies. However, neither the dynamics and cross-reactivity of the SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell response nor the diversity of resulting immune memory is well understood. In this study, we use longitudinal high-throughput T-cell receptor (TCR) sequencing to track changes in the T-cell repertoire following two mild cases of COVID-19. In both donors, we identified CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell clones with transient clonal expansion after infection. We describe characteristic motifs in TCR sequences of COVID-19-reactive clones and show preferential occurrence of these motifs in publicly available large dataset of repertoires from COVID-19 patients. We show that in both donors, the majority of infection-reactive clonotypes acquire memory phenotypes. Certain T-cell clones were detected in the memory fraction at the pre-infection time point, suggesting participation of pre-existing cross-reactive memory T cells in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2.