An αβ T-cell receptor is composed of two highly variable protein chains, the α

chain and the β chain. However, based only on bulk DNA or RNA sequencing it isimpossible to determine which of the α chain and β chain sequences were pairedin the same receptor.

In this episode, Kristina Grigaityte talks about her analysis of 200,000

paired αβ sequences, which have been obtained by targeted single-cell RNA sequencing.Kristina used the power law distribution to model the T-cell clone sizes,which led her to reject the commonly held assumptions about the independenceof the α and β chains. We also talk about Bayesian inference of power lawdistributions and about mixtures of power laws.

Links:

• Single-cell sequencing reveals αβ chain pairing shapes the T cell repertoire. Kristina Grigaityte, Jason A. Carter, Stephen J. Goldfless, Eric W. Jeffery, Ronald J. Hause, Yue Jiang, David Koppstein, Adrian W. Briggs, George M. Church, Francois Vigneault, Gurinder S. Atwal
• Bayesian inference of power law distributions. Kristina Grigaityte, Gurinder Atwal
• Mathematics in modern immunology. Castro M, Lythe G, Molina-París C, Ribeiro RM.
• Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf’s law. M. E. J. Newman
• So You Think You Have a Power Law — Well Isn’t That Special?