Analysis of the Conservation of T Cell Receptor Alpha and Beta Chain Variable Regions Gene in pp65 Peptide-Speciric HLA-A*0201-Restricted CD8+ T Cells

Many viral epitope specific T cell receptors (TCRs) in MHC-matched individuals have been demonstrated to involve conserved amino acid motifs in beta chain complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3). However, it is not sure whether the conserved motifs can also be found in TCR alpha chain. In previous studies, we developed a modified method to enlarge the percentage of cytomegalovirus (CMV) pp65 peptide-specific CD8(+) T cells in PBMC by continuous peptide stimulation in vitro, which provides sufficient number of specific T cells for detection. In this study, we further analyzed the restrictive usage of TCR V alpha and V beta gene families and investigated the CDR3 gene sequence of pp65 peptide-specific CD8(+) T cells. Analysis of CDR3 spectratypes suggested a restricted usage of TCR alpha chain AV8, AV12, AV21, AV31 families and TCR beta chain BV3, BV14, BV21, BV23, BV11 families in donor CD8(+) T cells stimulated by pp65 peptide. The sequences of these T cells involved similar sequence (TX) G(X)A in CDR3 region of TCR alpha chain and L(XT) G(X)A in TCR beta chain. Cellular & Molecular Immunology. 2009;6(2):105-110.