Identification of Food Allergen-Responsive T-Cell Receptors following Acute Exposure using Amplicon Deep Sequencing

Overview

With 1 in 10 Americans having a food allergy and half of them experiencing potentially fatal reactions, food allergies are a major problem. Allergies are the result of a person’s immune system improperly recognizing harmless molecules as deadly threats, leading to a maladaptive immune response. The cells then release toxic chemicals that harm or can even kill the body. I possess an allergy to tree nuts; if I eat any, after a few minutes, my mouth will start to itch, and I will sometimes throw up. Last summer, I accidentally consumed cashew butter, which I didn’t realize was an ingredient in some dairy-free lemon cookies. My symptoms quickly resolved, and I didn’t even feel the need to take Benadryl. I told my dad and asked him if I could take this opportunity to measure my T cells over the next several weeks, to identify a T cell clone that increases in response to my exposure. He provided parental consent to an institutional review board-approved biospecimen collection protocol and drew blood himself that day. I also asked him to do subsequent draws one week and three weeks afterwards, and all the samples were sent for TCR alpha and beta gene sequencing. I received the clonotype data and sifted through the receptors myself bioinformatically. I was able to identify several receptors with expansion and contraction patterns consistent with a memory re-challenge to allergen exposure. One prominent receptor I found is predicted to interact with a cashew allergen epitope presented by an MHC protein that is frequently present in Taiwanese individuals, which is my ethnic background. In the future, I hope to overexpress these T cell receptors and functionally confirm their antigen specificity.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Medicine & Physiology (Track 2) (Senior Division) · Entry S-21-17

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