T cell receptor repertoire deciphers anti-tuberculosis immunity

• Local subsets and recirculation subsets of T cells in TB patients were firstly separately studied and compared. • The extent of lymphocyte diversity in peripheral blood impacted the immune outcomes of tuberculosis. • Combination of scTCR-seq and GLIPH2 algorithm helped vaccine development and novel antigen discovery. • Functions and specificity of local T cell subsets remained to be discovered. T cell induced cellular immunity is considered to be extremely important for the control of tuberculosis (TB). T cell receptor (TCR), the key component responsible for the specificity and clustering of T cells, holds the potential to advance our understanding of T cell immunity against TB infection. This review systematically expounded the study progressions made in the field of TB-relevant TCRs based on single cell sequencing together with GLIPH2 technology and initiated a comparison of the T cell distribution between peripheral blood and infected organs. We divided clonal expanded T cell clones into recirculation subsets and local subsets to summarize their distinctions in clonal abundance, TCR sequences and antigenic specificity. Notably, local expansion appears to drive the primary variances in T cell subsets between these two contexts, indicating the necessity for further exploration into the functions and specificity of local subsets.