title: Peripheral T cell expansion in lymphopenic mice results in a restricted T cell repertoire.
abstract: In the absence of thymic contribution, the peripheral T cell pool is maintained by division of mature lymphocytes. Recent studies suggest that peripheral T cell expansion may be driven by low-affinity interactions with self ligands. Here we have investigated the consequence of homeostatic proliferation on the T cell repertoire. Following day 3 thymectomy of mice, there is a subsequent 30-fold expansion of the peripheral T cell population. Significantly, expansion of the T cell population results in skewed TCR Vbeta complementarity-determining region (CDR)3 length distributions and, in some cases, a marked bias toward one or two CDR3 lengths. TCR sequence analysis showed that these biases were a consequence of (oligo)clonal T cell expansion. Neonatally thymectomized adult mice have reduced antibody responses to primary challenge with T-dependent antigens. These data demonstrate that peripheral expansion of the T cell pool can result in a limited T cell repertoire, indicating that the array of stimulating ligands that drives homeostatic expansion is restricted.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Immunology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: N L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: La Gruta
authors.forename: I R
authors.initials: IR
authors.lastname: Driel
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Gleeson
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D022801:Complementarity Determining Regions / Q000032:analysis; D008231:Lymphopenia / Q000097:blood*; D051379:Mice; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016693:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta / Q000032:analysis; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000502:physiology*; D013934:Thymectomy
chemical_list: D022801:Complementarity Determining Regions; D016693:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta