Tan, CCS;
Owen, CJ;
Tham, CYL;
Bertoletti, A;
van Dorp, L;
Balloux, F;
(2021)
Pre-existing T cell-mediated cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 cannot solely be explained by prior exposure to endemic human coronaviruses.
Infection, Genetics and Evolution
, 95
, Article 105075. 10.1016/j.meegid.2021.105075.
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Abstract
T-cell-mediated immunity to SARS-CoV-2-derived peptides in individuals unexposed to SARS-CoV-2 has been previously reported. This pre-existing immunity was suggested to largely derive from prior exposure to ‘common cold’ endemic human coronaviruses (HCoVs). To test this, we characterised the sequence homology of SARS-CoV-2-derived T-cell epitopes reported in the literature across the full proteome of the Coronaviridae family. 54.8% of these epitopes had no homology to any of the HCoVs. Further, the proportion of SARS-CoV-2-derived epitopes with any level of sequence homology to the proteins encoded by any of the coronaviruses tested is well-predicted by their alignment-free phylogenetic distance to SARS-CoV-2 (Pearson's r = −0.958). No coronavirus in our dataset showed a significant excess of T-cell epitope homology relative to the proportion of expected random matches, given their genetic similarity to SARS-CoV-2. Our findings suggest that prior exposure to human or animal-associated coronaviruses cannot completely explain the T-cell repertoire in unexposed individuals that recognise SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive epitopes.
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