A Catalog of the Public T-cell Response to Cytomegalovirus

ECOclusters (Exposure Co-Occurrence clusters) are previously described groups of public T-cell receptors (TCRs) that tend to co-occur across T-cell repertoires from tens of thousands of donors. Each ECOcluster putatively represents the public T-cell response to a different prevalent immune exposure. We previously associated a 26,106-member ECOcluster with exposure to cytomegalovirus (CMV) and used it to define a sensitive, specific classifier for CMV seropositivity.

Here, we provide the CMV-associated ECOcluster TCRs, describe the ECOcluster and explore some types of analysis that it enables. We assess the CMV specificity of its component HLA-COclusters (subgroups of co-occurring TCRs associated with the same HLA). We use TCR sequence similarity within HLA-ECOclusters to identify groups of TCRs putatively responding to the same antigen, and we find suggestions of different subgroups of CMV-exposed donors responding to different antigens.

The CMV ECOcluster is the most complete catalog of the public T-cell response to CMV to date. We provide the CMV ECOcluster TCRs as a resource for research community use and exploration.