Extraction and characterization of the rhesus macaque T cell receptor β-chain genes

Rhesus macaque models have been instrumental for the development and testing of vaccines prior to human studies and have provided fundamental insights into the determinants of immune efficacy in a variety of infectious diseases. However, the characterization of antigen-specific T cell receptor (TCR) repertoires during adaptive immune responses in these models has previously relied on human TCR gene assignments. Here, we extracted and characterized TCR β-chain (TRB) genes from the recently sequenced rhesus macaque genome that are homologous to the human TRB genes. Comparison of the rhesus macaque TRB genes with the human TRB genes revealed an average best-match similarity of 92.9%. Furthermore, we confirmed the usage of most rhesus macaque TRB genes by expressed TCRβ sequences within epitope-specific TCR repertoires. This primary description of the rhesus macaque TRB genes will provide a standardized nomenclature and enable better characterization of TCR usage in studies that utilize this species.