PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Mikhail V. Pogorelyy AU - Yuval Elhanati AU - Quentin Marcou AU - Anastasia L. Sycheva AU - Ekaterina A. Komech AU - Vadim I. Nazarov AU - Olga V. Britanova AU - Dmitriy M. Chudakov AU - Ilgar Z. Mamedov AU - Yuri B. Lebedev AU - Thierry Mora AU - Aleksandra M. Walczak TI - Persisting fetal clonotypes influence the structure and overlap of adult human T cell receptor repertoires AID - 10.1101/039297 DP - 2016 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 039297 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/02/09/039297.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/02/09/039297.full AB - The diversity of T-cell receptors recognizing foreign pathogens is generated through a highly stochastic recombination process, making the independent production of the same sequence rare. Yet unrelated individuals do share receptors, which together constitute a “public” repertoire of abundant clonotypes. The TCR repertoire is initially formed prenatally, when the enzyme inserting random nucleotides is downregulated, producing a limited diversity subset. By statistically analyzing deep sequencing T-cell repertoire data from twins, unrelated individuals of various ages, and cord blood, we show that T-cell clones generated before birth persist and maintain high abundances in adult organisms for decades, slowly decaying with age. Our results suggest that large, low-diversity public clones are created during pregnancy, and survive over long periods, providing the basis of the public repertoire.