Publication Date:
1999-11-05
Description:
Generation and maintenance of an effective repertoire of T cell antigen receptors are essential to the immune system, yet the number of distinct T cell receptors (TCRs) expressed by the estimated 10(12) T cells in the human body is not known. In this study, TCR gene amplification and sequencing showed that there are about 10(6) different beta chains in the blood, each pairing, on the average, with at least 25 different alpha chains. In the memory subset, the diversity decreased to 1 x 10(5) to 2 x 10(5) different beta chains, each pairing with only a single alpha chain. Thus, the naive repertoire is highly diverse, whereas the memory compartment, here one-third of the T cell population, contributes less than 1 percent of the total diversity.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Arstila, T P -- Casrouge, A -- Baron, V -- Even, J -- Kanellopoulos, J -- Kourilsky, P -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1999 Oct 29;286(5441):958-61.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Unite de Biologie Moleculaire du Gene, INSERM U277, Institut Pasteur, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France. petteri.arstila@helsinki.fi〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10542151" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Adult
;
Female
;
Gene Amplification
;
Gene Rearrangement, T-Lymphocyte
;
*Genetic Variation
;
Humans
;
Immunologic Memory
;
Male
;
Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta/*genetics
;
T-Lymphocytes/*immunology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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