HIGHLY DIVERSE TCRalpha CHAIN REPERTOIRE OF PRE-IMMUNE CD8+ T CELLS REVEALS NEW INSIGHTS IN GENE RECOMBINATION

By sequencing tens of millions of TCRalpha chain transcripts from naive mouse CD8+ T cells, we observed a hugely diverse repertoire, comprising nearly all possible TRAV-TRAJ combinations. Our findings are not compatible with sequential coordinate gene recombination, but rather with a model in which contraction and DNA looping in the TCRalphadelta locus provide equal access to TRAV and TRAJ gene segments, similar to that demonstrated for IgH gene recombination High-throughput sequencing of entire TCRa repertoire from C57Bl/6 mice