title: The repertoire of T-lymphocytes recovered by bronchoalveolar lavage from healthy nonsmokers.
abstract: We reasoned that persistent exposure to a limited set of airborne antigens could drive the preferential expansion of single T-cell clones in the lower respiratory tract of normal individuals. To explore this issue, the normal human alpha/beta T-cell receptor repertoire was studied in lung lymphocytes obtained by bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) from the humen of the lower respiratory tract. BAL T-cells obtained from five healthy volunteers were first analysed using polymerase chain reaction to amplify all known V alpha and V beta genes of the T-cell receptor. T-cells from peripheral blood were used as an internal control. Heteroduplex analysis of the amplified products was then performed, to assess the clonal composition of the repertoire of lung- versus blood-derived T-lymphocytes within each amplified variable gene family. In all subjects, the T-cell repertoire in the lung was largely as heterogeneous as peripheral blood in terms of clonal composition. This indicated lack of preferential expansion of single T-cell clones. A few T-cell clones were simultaneously expanded in blood and lung in all individuals within a limited number of V beta (mean 2.4; range 2-4) and V alpha (mean 1.6; range 1-3) genes. We also found that lung T-lymphocytes expressed all of the V gene families of the T-cell receptor that were expressed by peripheral blood T-cells. Our results indicate that T-cell clones in the lower respiratory tract of normal individuals are distributed according to a largely polyclonal pattern, which corresponds to that found in peripheral blood.
authors.affiliation: DIBIT, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: S E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Burastero
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Borgonovo
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gaffi
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Frittoli
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wack
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Crimi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001483:Base Sequence; D018893:Bronchoalveolar Lavage; D001992:Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid / Q000166:cytology*; D004247:DNA / Q000032:analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009692:Nucleic Acid Heteroduplexes / Q000032:analysis*; D015345:Oligonucleotide Probes / Q000737:chemistry; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D016693:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D009692:Nucleic Acid Heteroduplexes; D015345:Oligonucleotide Probes; D016693:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta; D004247:DNA