Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Moscow, Russian Federation
Ekaterina A Komech
Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Moscow, Russian Federation; Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Moscow, Russian Federation
Aleksei Titov
National Research Center for Hematology, Moscow, Russian Federation
Meriem Bensouda Koraichi
Laboratoire de physique de l'École Normale Supérieure, ENS, PSL, Sorbonne Universite, Universite de Paris, and CNRS, Paris, France
Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany
Ilgar Z Mamedov
Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Moscow, Russian Federation; Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Moscow, Russian Federation; Masaryk University, Central European Institute of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic; V.I. Kulakov National Medical Research Center for Obstetrics, Gynecology and Perinatology, Moscow, Russian Federation
Andre Franke
Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany
Grigory A Efimov
National Research Center for Hematology, Moscow, Russian Federation
Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Moscow, Russian Federation; Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Moscow, Russian Federation; Masaryk University, Central European Institute of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic
Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Moscow, Russian Federation; Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Moscow, Russian Federation
COVID-19 is a global pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. T cells play a key role in the adaptive antiviral immune response by killing infected cells and facilitating the selection of virus-specific antibodies. However, neither the dynamics and cross-reactivity of the SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell response nor the diversity of resulting immune memory is well understood. In this study, we use longitudinal high-throughput T-cell receptor (TCR) sequencing to track changes in the T-cell repertoire following two mild cases of COVID-19. In both donors, we identified CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell clones with transient clonal expansion after infection. We describe characteristic motifs in TCR sequences of COVID-19-reactive clones and show preferential occurrence of these motifs in publicly available large dataset of repertoires from COVID-19 patients. We show that in both donors, the majority of infection-reactive clonotypes acquire memory phenotypes. Certain T-cell clones were detected in the memory fraction at the pre-infection time point, suggesting participation of pre-existing cross-reactive memory T cells in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2.
