Figure 6: A frequent motif in the Vγ4 repertoire.

(a,b) CDR3 amino-acid sequence length distribution and composition of in-frame-rearranged Vγ4 chains in (a) Vγ4⁺ γδ T cells pooled from the pLN and spleen of four TcrdH2BeGFP or four tamoxifen-induced Indu-Rag1 × TcrdH2BeGFP mice; 10,000 Vγ4⁺ cells and 2,892 in-frame sequences each. (b) CCR6⁻CD27⁺ or CCR6⁺CD27⁻ Vγ4⁺ T cells isolated from the pooled pLN and spleen of three TcrdH2BeGFP mice; 12,000 Vγ4⁺ cells and 6,888 in-frame sequences each. Individual in-frame-rearranged CDR3 amino-acid sequences are separated by colours. Sequences containing the SYGXYSSGFHKV motif are shown in green tones within a red box, and the sequence SYG_YSSGFHKV (lacking X) with 11 amino acids is also shown in green. Data are representatives of three independent experiments. (c) Graphical representation of multiple sequence alignment for the frequent Vγ4 amino-acid motif, SYGXYSSGFHKV, inspired by http://weblogo.berkeley.edu. (d) Percentage of the most frequent CDR3 sequence, SYGLYSSGFHKV, and the proportion of its related nucleotide sequences (in blue tone), along with percentage of other nucleotide sequences containing the SYGXYSSGFHKV motif (in light green), and the sequences for SYG_YSSGFHKV (in dark green), within all in-frame Vγ4 sequences of the indicated populations. Data are representative of two independent experiments that gave similar results.