Development and Compartmentalization of the Porcine TCR δ Repertoire at Mucosal and Extraintestinal Sites: The Pig as a Model for Analyzing the Effects of Age and Microbial Factors

gammadelta T cells are an important component of the mucosal immune system. Previously, we have shown that the TCR delta repertoire in human intestine is polyclonal at birth and becomes increasingly restricted with age. In this study, we expand those studies to the pig which allows more extensive experiments including several organs. Tissues from different mucosal sites like the stomach, duodenum, ileum, Peyer's patches, jejunum, and colon, and also extraintestinal sites like the lung, spleen, thymus and mesenteric lymph nodes, were obtained from conventionally reared pigs aged 2 wk to 5.5 years. In addition, tissues were also obtained from 10-wk-old specified pathogen- and germ-free pigs. TCRDV1-DV5 transcripts were amplified by RT-PCR after which complementarity-determining region 3 spectratyping was performed. Individual bands were excised from the gels and directly sequenced. The intestinal TCR delta repertoire showed increasing restriction with age and was highly oligoclonal in the adult 2- to 5.5-year-old pigs. In old pigs, we observed a striking compartmentalization. Different TCR delta repertoires were present between the lungs and the intestinal mucosa but also within different parts of the gastrointestinal tract. However, occasionally we observed identical TCR delta transcripts in the intestine and the lungs and shared clones could be detected also along the entire gastrointestinal tract. Thus, subsets of gammadelta T cells are likely to transport immunological information between different compartments of the immune system. Furthermore, these data support the hypothesis that in each mucosal site, different Ags are responsible for selecting and maintaining the gammadelta TCR over time.