The repertoire features of T cell receptor β-chain of different age and gender groups in healthy Chinese individuals

Abstract

T cell immunity is dependent on T cell receptor (TCR) recognition of large numbers of antigenic peptides presented in the context of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and II molecules. To explore whether the TCR β-chain repertoire changes with different ages and genders in healthy Chinese individuals, we analyzed the TCR β-chain repertoire in 154 healthy Chinese individuals by High-throughput sequencing (HTS) with age (age range: 6-70) and each age group contains about 20 individuals (male and female). Here we report that the extent of TCR diversity was not dependent on gender but it was significantly different between age groups. We found that the rearrangement of the V with J genes in T cell receptor β-chain was highest at the age of 21-30. Moreover, we found that the combination of V6-1 and J2-1 gene had the highest expression over a human lifespan. We further identified J2-1 and V7-2 gene expressed higher at the age of 6-10 and 11-20 than other age groups. However, D gene in TCR β-chain was not significantly diverse in different age groups. In addition, the T cell receptor β complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) amino acid sequence expressed the highest between the age of 21-30. These results showed different features of TCR β-chain repertoire in different groups of healthy Chinese individuals. In conclusion, it was expected that these TCR repertoires could serve as a useful tool for investigating the role of immune profiling in healthy Chinese individuals. These results stress the importance of considering age as a factor for immune response.

Keywords: Age; High-throughput sequencing; Repertoire; T cell receptor; β-chain.