In vivo and in vitro T cell development

Summary

Our laboratory is interested in understanding the establishment of T cell receptor repertoires and the role played by polymorphic peptide-MHC complexes in shaping this.

Project aims

This project can be adapted to focus on wet lab cell atlas technologies and/or drylab data science and AI/ML research. We study ex vivo thymus samples as well as in vitro artificial thymic organdies.

We examine recurring motifs in paired alpha and beta chain TCR sequences, and model these with tools such as alpha-fold and utilise deep learning approaches to try to predict binding specificities.

Extensive TCR sequencing from single cell data will also from the basis for developing better tools to understand the VDJ rearrangement process, including the identification of D-D, reversed or dual recombination on top of non-functional rearrangements to understand whether these are part of real TCRs and how these TCRs are distributed within the range of T cell subtypes.

Contact details

Professor Sarah Teichmann - sat1003@cam.ac.uk

Opportunities

This project is open to applicants who want to do a:

• PhD