查看文章

To investigate the mechanism of selection of individual human CD8+ T cell clones into long-term memory following primary infection with a persistent human virus (human CMV (HCMV)), we undertook a longitudinal analysis of the diversity of T cell clones directed toward an immunodominant viral epitope: we followed this longitudinally from early T cell expansion through the contraction phase and selection into the memory pool. We show that following initial HCMV infection, the early primary response against a defined epitope was composed of diverse clones possessing many different TCR Vβ segments. Longitudinal analysis showed that this usage rapidly focused predominantly on a single TCR Vβ segment within which dominant clones frequently had public TCR usage, in contrast to subdominant or contracted clones. Longitudinal clonotypic analysis showed evidence of disproportionate contraction of certain …