Objectives: This study investigated the characteristics of the immune repertoire in normal Chinese individuals of different ages.
Materials and Methods:In this study, all seven receptor chains from both B and T cells in peripheral blood of 16 normal Chinese individuals from two age groups were analyzed using high-throughput sequencing and dimer-avoided multiplex PCR amplification. Normal in this study is defined as no chronic, infectious or autoimmune disease within 6 months prior to blood draw.
Results:We found that compared with the younger group, the clonal expression of T-cell receptor repertoire increased in the older group, while diversity decreased. In addition, we found that the T-cell receptor repertoire was more significantly affected by age than the B-cell receptor repertoire, including significant differences in the use of the unique TCR-alpha and TCR-beta V-J gene combinations, in the two groups of normal participants. We further analyzed the degree of complementarity determining region 3 sequence sharing between the two groups, and found shared TCR-alpha, TCR-gamma, immunoglobulin-kappa and immunoglobulin-lambda chain complementarity determining region 3 sequences in all subjects.
Conclusion:Taken together, our study gives us a better understanding of the immune repertoire of different normal Chinese people, and these results can be applied to the treatment of age-related diseases. Immune repertoire analysis also allows us to observe participant's wellness, aiding in early-stage diagnosis.
| INTRODUCTIONThe Adaptome is a collection of all the structural and functional diversity of T cell receptors (TCRs) and B cell receptors (BCRs) of an individual at any given time, which accurately and comprehensively reflects the dynamic changes of the immune system. 1 Within the Cailing Song and Wenjing Pan have contributed equally to this study and share first authorship.