Identifying antibodies and T-cell receptors with known specificity in repertoire sequencing data

Abstract

Abstract The adaptive immune system in vertebrates has evolved to recognize an immense number of pathogens. B and T cells play important role in the antigen recognition by expressing a substantially diverse repertoire of antigen-specific receptors. The recent advances in the high-throughput immune repertoire sequencing has led to a tremendous increase in the antibody and T-cell receptor information. Identification of specific epitopes recognized by the receptors is vital in analyzing the repertoire sequencing data. Here, we present a tool that examines data from an immune receptor repertoire experiment, and identifies receptors (or highly related variants) that are present in the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB). The IEDB is a free resource which compiles experiments characterizing immune epitopes. IEDB also captures the epitope-specific immune receptor sequences and groups them based on their epitope specificity. IEDB currently has information on over 26,000 receptor groups. Users can provide receptor repertoire sequence data in multiple formats, and specify different CDR sequence identity cutoffs to restrict or broaden the receptor search. We expect that this tool will provide new insights into B and T cell responses captured in the receptor repertoire experiments by identifying specific epitopes, and facilitate development of new strategies for monitoring and treating of infectious, allergic and autoimmune diseases.