Identifying common features of T Cell Receptor sequences across thousands of unrelated samples

The different T Cell Receptors (TCRs) expressed by T cells of one individual have been termed the TCR repertoire. The difference between the potential diversity and the actual diversity of T cells in an individual, leads to the expectation that the chances of seeing an overlap between the repertoire of two different individuals are extremely low. However, recent advances in high-throughput sequencing, have shown that a considerable fraction of TCRs is actually shared between individuals. Although many studies have been conducted in the context of the immune repertoire, most of these studies have been carried out on a set of samples collected from at most tens to hundreds of samples.

Here, we present a new and unique T cell repertoire dataset, comprising of thousands of independent samples of different indications, across a wide age range, and from different tissues. This dataset allows us to examine numerous aspects of the repertoire, and to perform analyses on data an order of magnitude greater than previous works. Our goal is to study the characteristics of the public repertoire using computational and bioinformatic tools. We are especially interested in the small set of top public sequences which appear in almost all samples.

Analyzing the TCR repertoire may help researchers gain a better understanding of the immune system. This understanding will shed light on treatment options.