Many different Vβ CDR3s can reveal the inherent MHC reactivity of germline-encoded TCR V regions

We have hypothesized that in the prenegative selection TCR repertoire, many somatically generated complementary-determining region (CDR) 3 loops combine with evolutionarily selected germline Vα/Vβ CDR1/CDR2 loops to create highly MHC/peptide cross-reactive T cells that are subsequently deleted by negative selection. Here, we present a mutational analysis of the Vβ CDR3 of such a cross-reactive T-cell receptor (TCR), YAe62. Most YAe62 TCRs with the mutant CDR3s became less MHC promiscuous. However, others with CDR3s unrelated in sequence to the original recognized even more MHC alleles than the original TCR. Most importantly, this recognition was still dependent on the conserved CDR1/CDR2 residues. These results bolster the idea that germline TCR V elements are inherently reactive to MHC but that this reactivity is fine-tuned by the somatically generated CDR3 loops.