De novo inference of diversity genes and analysis of non-canonical V(DD)J recombination in immunoglobulins

TL;DR

This paper introduces IgScout, a novel algorithm for de novo reconstruction of D genes in immunoglobulins, revealing new alleles and analyzing non-canonical V(DD)J recombination to expand understanding of antibody diversity.

Contribution

The study presents IgScout, the first method for de novo D gene inference, and provides insights into non-canonical V(DD)J recombination mechanisms.

Findings

Revealed new human D gene alleles.

Discovered previously unknown D genes in camels.

Identified ultra-long tandem CDR3s as a functional feature.

Abstract

The V(D)J recombination forms the immunoglobulin genes by joining the variable (V), diversity (D), and joining (J) germline genes. Since variations in germline genes have been linked to various diseases, personalized immunogenomics aims at finding alleles of germline genes across various patients. Although recent studies described algorithms for de novo inference of V and J genes from immunosequencing data, they stopped short of solving a more difficult problem of reconstructing D genes that form the highly divergent CDR3 regions and provide the most important contribution to the antigen binding. We present the IgScout algorithm for de novo D gene reconstruction and apply it to reveal new alleles of human D genes and previously unknown D genes in camel, an important model organism in immunology. We further analyze non-canonical V(DD)J recombination that results in unusually long tandem CDR3s and thus expands the diversity of the antibody repertoires. We demonstrate that tandem CDR3s represent a consistent and functional feature of all analyzed immunosequencing datasets, reveal ultra-long tandem CDR3s, and shed light on the mechanism responsible for their formation.