Immunology repertoire study of pulmonary sarcoidosis T cells in CD4+, CD8+ PBMC and tissue

• Published in: Oncotarget Vol. 8; no. 52; pp. 89515 - 89526
• Main Authors: Fu, Yingyun, Li, Yazhen, Xu, Lan, Liu, Shengguo, Wang, Minlian, Xiao, Lu, Liu, Song, Dai, Yong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Impact Journals LLC 27.10.2017
• Subjects: Research Paper: Immunology; Immune response; TCR BV CDR3; immune system; Immunology and Microbiology Section; sarcoidosis; CDR3; Immunity; PMBCs
• ISSN: 1949-2553; 1949-2553
• DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.20085

Sarcoidosis is a systemic granulomatous disorder highly related with immune response. The diversity and stability of the immune system could be measured by hypervariable complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) segments of the T cell receptor (TCR). Here we used a combination of multiplex PCR and next-generation sequencing to conduct a good quality analysis of the T-cell receptor BV complementarity-determining region 3 (TCR BV CDR3) gene in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 7 sarcoidosis patients and lung sarcoidosis tissue from 6 patients. The length distribution of CDR3 sequences identified a significant difference among CD4+, CD8+ and tissue samples. The analysis of Gini coefficient, Shannon entropy and HEC number showed that they all presents in sarcoidosis tissue group clones in a more skewed manner than that of in PMBCs groups. 2 nucleotide sequences and 2 amino acid sequences were shared by all samples. The comparison of TRBV, TRBJ usage and VJ combination frequency identified 2 TRBV genes, 2 TRBJ genes differentially expressed among different groups and different higher usage and lower usage of V-J combinations between each group.