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Longitudinal high-throughput TCR repertoire profiling reveals the dynamics of T cell memory formation after mild COVID-19 infection
- Source :
- eLife 10 e63502 (2020)
- Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- COVID-19 is a global pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. T cells play a key role in the adaptive antiviral immune response by killing infected cells and facilitating the selection of virus-specific antibodies. However neither the dynamics and cross-reactivity of the SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell response nor the diversity of resulting immune memory are well understood. In this study we use longitudinal high-throughput T cell receptor (TCR) sequencing to track changes in the T cell repertoire following two mild cases of COVID-19. In both donors we identified CD4+ and CD8+ T cell clones with transient clonal expansion after infection. The antigen specificity of CD8+ TCR sequences to SARS-CoV-2 epitopes was confirmed by both MHC tetramer binding and presence in large database of SARS-CoV-2 epitope-specific TCRs. We describe characteristic motifs in TCR sequences of COVID-19-reactive clones and show preferential occurence of these motifs in publicly available large dataset of repertoires from COVID-19 patients. We show that in both donors the majority of infection-reactive clonotypes acquire memory phenotypes. Certain T cell clones were detected in the memory fraction at the pre-infection timepoint, suggesting participation of pre-existing cross-reactive memory T cells in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2.
- Subjects :
- Quantitative Biology - Genomics
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- arXiv
- Journal :
- eLife 10 e63502 (2020)
- Publication Type :
- Report
- Accession number :
- edsarx.2005.08290
- Document Type :
- Working Paper
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.63502