The molecular basis for public T-cell responses?

V Venturi, DA Price, DC Douek… - Nature Reviews …, 2008 - nature.com
V Venturi, DA Price, DC Douek, MP Davenport
Nature Reviews Immunology, 2008nature.com
Public T-cell responses, in which T cells bearing identical T-cell receptors (TCRs) are
observed to dominate the response to the same antigenic epitope in multiple individuals,
have long been a focus of immune T-cell repertoire studies. However, the mechanism that
enables the survival of a specific TCR from the diverse repertoire produced in the thymus
through to its involvement in a public immune response remains unclear. In this Opinion
article, we propose that the frequency of production of T cells bearing different TCRs during …
Abstract
Public T-cell responses, in which T cells bearing identical T-cell receptors (TCRs) are observed to dominate the response to the same antigenic epitope in multiple individuals, have long been a focus of immune T-cell repertoire studies. However, the mechanism that enables the survival of a specific TCR from the diverse repertoire produced in the thymus through to its involvement in a public immune response remains unclear. In this Opinion article, we propose that the frequency of production of T cells bearing different TCRs during recombination has an important role in the sharing of TCRs in an immune response, with variable levels of 'convergent recombination' driving production frequencies.
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