tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
Viruses
. 2021 Sep 7;13(9):1786.
doi: 10.3390/v13091786.
Quantifying T Cell Cross-Reactivity: Influenza and Coronaviruses
Jessica Ann Gaevert[SUP] 1 2 [/SUP], Daniel Luque Duque[SUP] 3 [/SUP], Grant Lythe[SUP] 3 [/SUP], Carmen Molina-París[SUP] 3 4 [/SUP], Paul Glyndwr Thomas[SUP] 1 2 [/SUP]
Affiliations
Abstract
If viral strains are sufficiently similar in their immunodominant epitopes, then populations of cross-reactive T cells may be boosted by exposure to one strain and provide protection against infection by another at a later date. This type of pre-existing immunity may be important in the adaptive immune response to influenza and to coronaviruses. Patterns of recognition of epitopes by T cell clonotypes (a set of cells sharing the same T cell receptor) are represented as edges on a bipartite network. We describe different methods of constructing bipartite networks that exhibit cross-reactivity, and the dynamics of the T cell repertoire in conditions of homeostasis, infection and re-infection. Cross-reactivity may arise simply by chance, or because immunodominant epitopes of different strains are structurally similar. We introduce a circular space of epitopes, so that T cell cross-reactivity is a quantitative measure of the overlap between clonotypes that recognize similar (that is, close in epitope space) epitopes.
Keywords: bipartite network; competition process; cross-reactivity; heterologous infection; mathematical modeling; pre-existing immunity.
. 2021 Sep 7;13(9):1786.
doi: 10.3390/v13091786.
Quantifying T Cell Cross-Reactivity: Influenza and Coronaviruses
Jessica Ann Gaevert[SUP] 1 2 [/SUP], Daniel Luque Duque[SUP] 3 [/SUP], Grant Lythe[SUP] 3 [/SUP], Carmen Molina-París[SUP] 3 4 [/SUP], Paul Glyndwr Thomas[SUP] 1 2 [/SUP]
Affiliations
- PMID: 34578367
- DOI: 10.3390/v13091786
Abstract
If viral strains are sufficiently similar in their immunodominant epitopes, then populations of cross-reactive T cells may be boosted by exposure to one strain and provide protection against infection by another at a later date. This type of pre-existing immunity may be important in the adaptive immune response to influenza and to coronaviruses. Patterns of recognition of epitopes by T cell clonotypes (a set of cells sharing the same T cell receptor) are represented as edges on a bipartite network. We describe different methods of constructing bipartite networks that exhibit cross-reactivity, and the dynamics of the T cell repertoire in conditions of homeostasis, infection and re-infection. Cross-reactivity may arise simply by chance, or because immunodominant epitopes of different strains are structurally similar. We introduce a circular space of epitopes, so that T cell cross-reactivity is a quantitative measure of the overlap between clonotypes that recognize similar (that is, close in epitope space) epitopes.
Keywords: bipartite network; competition process; cross-reactivity; heterologous infection; mathematical modeling; pre-existing immunity.