Abstract
Human T cell development occurs in two waves of development and proliferation: first, early T cells expressing the TCRb chain but not the α-chain are selected for functional TCRβ protein independent of HLA recognition, a process called β-selection; second, thymocytes expressing both the α- and β-TCR are selected for intermediate affinity for self-MHC/ self-peptide complex. This latter process is referred to as positive selection. We sought to determine whether the peripheral TCRVβ frequencies in the naïve T cell repertoire start off at a fixed rank order with minimal skewing as would be expected from a predominantly β-selected repertoire. A total of 22 TCRVβ proteins was quantitated by flow cytometry in a group of 20 unselected umbilical cord blood (UCB) samples (a kind gift from Dr. P. Rubinstein, NY Blood Center, NY), consisting of >80% naïve T cells as defined by CD27+CD45RA+ staining in CD4+ and CD8+ cells. A common rank order of TCRVβ protein frequencies was found in both CD4 and CD8 T cell subsets (figure 1). Median TCRVβ frequencies in CD4 and in CD8 cells of UCB were statistically not significantly different from the frequencies in adult donor CD4 and CD8 cells (Wilcoxon signed rank test; p > 0.2). Furthermore, the percentages of CD4 cells expressing a particular Vβ correlated significantly in CD8 cells (figure 2) with some Vβ proteins being predominantly expressed by either CD4 (Vβ2, Vβ5.1) or CD8 (Vβ14, Vβ7) cells. Our data therefore conform to the prediction that the TCRVβ frequencies are dominantly shaped by β-selection, and not by interactions of the αβTCR/ co-receptor with MHC/ antigen complexes during thymic selection.
TCRBV in UCB CD4+ (top) and CD8+ (bottom) T cells
Comparison of TCRBV protein expression frequencies in CD4 and CD8 cells of UCB
