Ecological analysis of antigen-specific CTL repertoires defines the relationship between naïve and immune T-cell populations

Abstract

Ecology is typically thought ofas the study of interactions organisms have with each other and their environment and is focused on the distribution and abundance of organisms both within and between environments.Onamolecular level, thecapacitytoprobe analogous questions in the field of T-cell immunology is imperative as we acquire substantial datasets both on epitope-specific T-cell populations through high-resolution analyses of T-cell receptor (TCR) use and on global T-cell populations analyzed via high-throughput DNA sequencing. Here, we present the innovative application of existing statistical measures (used typically in the field of ecology), together with unique statistical analyses, ..