How many different clonotypes do immune repertoires contain?

Abstract

Immune repertoires rely on diversity of T-cell and B-cell receptors to protect us against foreign threats. The ability to recognize a wide variety of pathogens is linked to the number of different clonotypes expressed by an individual. Out of the estimated [~] 1012 different B and T cells in humans, how many of them express distinct receptors? We review current and past estimates for these numbers. We point out a fundamental limitation of current methods, which ignore the tail of small clones in the distribution of clone sizes. We show that this tail strongly affects the total number of clones, but it is impractical to access experimentally. We propose that combining statistical models with mechanistic models of lymphocyte clonal dynamics offers possible new strategies for estimating the number of clones.