A special repertoire of alpha:beta T cells in neonatal mice.
According to several functional criteria, the mature thymocytes of neonatal and adult mice are distinctly different. We wondered whether these differences in function might have a structural correlate: do neonates have a distinct repertoire of alpha:beta T cells? In this study, we have exploited the power of polymerase chain reaction technology to generate large numbers of T cell receptor sequences from sorted thymocyte populations from newborn and adult mice. The newborn-derived sequences show very few N nucleotide additions, usually the major source of diversity in T cell receptors. Most interestingly, the paucity of N insertions appears to be exaggerated by selection events that operate during T cell differentiation in the thymus. The significance of these results is largely: (i) that they parallel recent findings on the B cell repertoire in neonates, raising questions about the reactivities specified by such a special repertoire; and (ii) that they suggest a means to 'tag' T cells exported perinatally, allowing one to test the premise that autoreactive T cells derive preferentially from the newborn repertoire.
Bogue
M
M
Laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire des Eucaryotes du CNRS, Strasbourg, France.
Candéias
S
S
Benoist
C
C
Mathis
D
D
D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D001483:Base Sequence; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D005434:Flow Cytometry; D051379:Mice; D008815:Mice, Inbred Strains; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D016693:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta / Q000235:genetics*; D016176:T-Lymphocyte Subsets; D013950:Thymus Gland / Q000166:cytology; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
D016693:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta