Sheep TRD@ locus consists of a large number of TRDV elements

Abstract

The T cell receptor (TcR) expressed on mature T lymphocytes is a disulphidelinked heterodimer composed of alpha and beta or gamma and delta glycoprotein subunits. According to the frequency of gamma/delta TcR cells in their peripheral T-cell population, human and mice have been defined as “gamma/delta low species” whereas artiodactyls and chicken as “gamma/delta high species” (Hein and Dudler, 1993). In all species, each of TcR chains are generated by a different gene combination of Variable (V), Diversity (D) and Joining (J) gene segments for beta and delta chains and only V and J elements for alpha and gamma chains. After transcription, the V(D)J sequence is spliced to a Constant (C) region. Three different loci encode for the glycoprotein subunit (IMGT database). In human and mouse, the genomic organization of the delta locus (TRD@) is very complex.......

Keywords

• T cell receptor, TRD@, sheep, TRDV1 family.