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Weber LL, Reiman D, Roddur MS, Qi Y, El-Kebir M, Khan AA. Isotype-aware inference of B cell clonal lineage trees from single-cell sequencing data. CELL GENOMICS 2024:100637. [PMID: 39208795 DOI: 10.1016/j.xgen.2024.100637] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/05/2024] [Revised: 06/19/2024] [Accepted: 08/06/2024] [Indexed: 09/04/2024]
Abstract
Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) enables comprehensive characterization of the micro-evolutionary processes of B cells during an adaptive immune response, capturing features of somatic hypermutation (SHM) and class switch recombination (CSR). Existing phylogenetic approaches for reconstructing B cell evolution have primarily focused on the SHM process alone. Here, we present tree inference of B cell clonal lineages (TRIBAL), an algorithm designed to optimally reconstruct the evolutionary history of B cell clonal lineages undergoing both SHM and CSR from scRNA-seq data. Through simulations, we demonstrate that TRIBAL produces more comprehensive and accurate B cell lineage trees compared to existing methods. Using real-world datasets, TRIBAL successfully recapitulates expected biological trends in a model affinity maturation system while reconstructing evolutionary histories with more parsimonious class switching than state-of-the-art methods. Thus, TRIBAL significantly improves B cell lineage tracing, useful for modeling vaccine responses, disease progression, and the identification of therapeutic antibodies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leah L Weber
- Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
| | - Derek Reiman
- Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - Mrinmoy S Roddur
- Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
| | - Yuanyuan Qi
- Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
| | - Mohammed El-Kebir
- Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
| | - Aly A Khan
- Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Department of Pathology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago, Chicago, IL 60642, USA.
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2
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Hoehn KB, Kleinstein SH. B cell phylogenetics in the single cell era. Trends Immunol 2024; 45:62-74. [PMID: 38151443 PMCID: PMC10872299 DOI: 10.1016/j.it.2023.11.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/26/2023] [Revised: 11/22/2023] [Accepted: 11/24/2023] [Indexed: 12/29/2023]
Abstract
The widespread availability of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has led to the development of new methods for understanding immune responses. Single-cell transcriptome data can now be paired with B cell receptor (BCR) sequences. However, RNA from BCRs cannot be analyzed like most other genes because BCRs are genetically diverse within individuals. In humans, BCRs are shaped through recombination followed by mutation and selection for antigen binding. As these processes co-occur with cell division, B cells can be studied using phylogenetic trees representing the mutations within a clone. B cell trees can link experimental timepoints, tissues, or cellular subtypes. Here, we review the current state and potential of how B cell phylogenetics can be combined with single-cell data to understand immune responses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kenneth B Hoehn
- Department of Biomedical Data Science, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
| | - Steven H Kleinstein
- Department of Pathology, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520, USA; Program in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA; Department of Immunobiology, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
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3
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Dudzic P, Chomicz D, Kończak J, Satława T, Janusz B, Wrobel S, Gawłowski T, Jaszczyszyn I, Bielska W, Demharter S, Spreafico R, Schulte L, Martin K, Comeau SR, Krawczyk K. Large-scale data mining of four billion human antibody variable regions reveals convergence between therapeutic and natural antibodies that constrains search space for biologics drug discovery. MAbs 2024; 16:2361928. [PMID: 38844871 PMCID: PMC11164219 DOI: 10.1080/19420862.2024.2361928] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/30/2024] [Accepted: 05/27/2024] [Indexed: 06/12/2024] Open
Abstract
The naïve human antibody repertoire has theoretical access to an estimated > 1015 antibodies. Identifying subsets of this prohibitively large space where therapeutically relevant antibodies may be found is useful for development of these agents. It was previously demonstrated that, despite the immense sequence space, different individuals can produce the same antibodies. It was also shown that therapeutic antibodies, which typically follow seemingly unnatural development processes, can arise independently naturally. To check for biases in how the sequence space is explored, we data mined public repositories to identify 220 bioprojects with a combined seven billion reads. Of these, we created a subset of human bioprojects that we make available as the AbNGS database (https://naturalantibody.com/ngs/). AbNGS contains 135 bioprojects with four billion productive human heavy variable region sequences and 385 million unique complementarity-determining region (CDR)-H3s. We find that 270,000 (0.07% of 385 million) unique CDR-H3s are highly public in that they occur in at least five of 135 bioprojects. Of 700 unique therapeutic CDR-H3, a total of 6% has direct matches in the small set of 270,000. This observation extends to a match between CDR-H3 and V-gene call as well. Thus, the subspace of shared ('public') CDR-H3s shows utility for serving as a starting point for therapeutic antibody design.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Lukas Schulte
- Global Computational Biology & Digital Sciences, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG, Biberach an der Riß, Germany
| | - Kyle Martin
- Biotherapeutics Discovery, Boehringer Ingelheim, Ridgefield, CT, USA
| | - Stephen R. Comeau
- Biotherapeutics Discovery, Boehringer Ingelheim, Ridgefield, CT, USA
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Weber LL, Reiman D, Roddur MS, Qi Y, El-Kebir M, Khan AA. TRIBAL: Tree Inference of B cell Clonal Lineages. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2023:2023.11.27.568874. [PMID: 38076836 PMCID: PMC10705245 DOI: 10.1101/2023.11.27.568874] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/12/2024]
Abstract
B cells are a critical component of the adaptive immune system, responsible for producing antibodies that help protect the body from infections and foreign substances. Single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) has allowed for both profiling of B cell receptor (BCR) sequences and gene expression. However, understanding the adaptive and evolutionary mechanisms of B cells in response to specific stimuli remains a significant challenge in the field of immunology. We introduce a new method, TRIBAL, which aims to infer the evolutionary history of clonally related B cells from scRNA-seq data. The key insight of TRIBAL is that inclusion of isotype data into the B cell lineage inference problem is valuable for reducing phylogenetic uncertainty that arises when only considering the receptor sequences. Consequently, the TRIBAL inferred B cell lineage trees jointly capture the somatic mutations introduced to the B cell receptor during affinity maturation and isotype transitions during class switch recombination. In addition, TRIBAL infers isotype transition probabilities that are valuable for gaining insight into the dynamics of class switching. Via in silico experiments, we demonstrate that TRIBAL infers isotype transition probabilities with the ability to distinguish between direct versus sequential switching in a B cell population. This results in more accurate B cell lineage trees and corresponding ancestral sequence and class switch reconstruction compared to competing methods. Using real-world scRNA-seq datasets, we show that TRIBAL recapitulates expected biological trends in a model affinity maturation system. Furthermore, the B cell lineage trees inferred by TRIBAL were equally plausible for the BCR sequences as those inferred by competing methods but yielded lower entropic partitions for the isotypes of the sequenced B cell. Thus, our method holds the potential to further advance our understanding of vaccine responses, disease progression, and the identification of therapeutic antibodies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leah L. Weber
- Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, USA
| | - Derek Reiman
- Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - Mrinmoy S. Roddur
- Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, USA
| | - Yuanyuan Qi
- Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, USA
| | - Mohammed El-Kebir
- Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, USA
| | - Aly A. Khan
- Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
- Department of Pathology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
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Wang K, Hu X, Zhang J. Fast clonal family inference from large-scale B cell repertoire sequencing data. CELL REPORTS METHODS 2023; 3:100601. [PMID: 37788671 PMCID: PMC10626204 DOI: 10.1016/j.crmeth.2023.100601] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/24/2023] [Revised: 07/31/2023] [Accepted: 09/08/2023] [Indexed: 10/05/2023]
Abstract
Advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies have facilitated the large-scale characterization of B cell receptor (BCR) repertoires. However, the vast amount and high diversity of the BCR sequences pose challenges for efficient and biologically meaningful analysis. Here, we introduce fastBCR, an efficient computational approach for inferring B cell clonal families from massive BCR heavy chain sequences. We demonstrate that fastBCR substantially reduces the running time while ensuring high accuracy on simulated datasets with diverse numbers of B cell lineages and varying mutation rates. We apply fastBCR to real BCR sequencing data from peripheral blood samples of COVID-19 patients, showing that the inferred clonal families display disease-associated features, as well as corresponding antigen-binding specificity and affinity. Overall, our results demonstrate the advantages of fastBCR for analyzing BCR repertoire data, which will facilitate the identification of disease-associated antibodies and improve our understanding of the B cell immune response.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kaixuan Wang
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
| | - Xihao Hu
- GV20 Therapeutics, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Jian Zhang
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
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Ruiz Ortega M, Spisak N, Mora T, Walczak AM. Modeling and predicting the overlap of B- and T-cell receptor repertoires in healthy and SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals. PLoS Genet 2023; 19:e1010652. [PMID: 36827454 PMCID: PMC10075420 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1010652] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2022] [Revised: 04/05/2023] [Accepted: 02/02/2023] [Indexed: 02/26/2023] Open
Abstract
Adaptive immunity's success relies on the extraordinary diversity of protein receptors on B and T cell membranes. Despite this diversity, the existence of public receptors shared by many individuals gives hope for developing population-wide vaccines and therapeutics. Using probabilistic modeling, we show many of these public receptors are shared by chance in healthy individuals. This predictable overlap is driven not only by biases in the random generation process of receptors, as previously reported, but also by their common functional selection. However, the model underestimates sharing between repertoires of individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2, suggesting strong specific antigen-driven convergent selection. We exploit this discrepancy to identify COVID-associated receptors, which we validate against datasets of receptors with known viral specificity. We study their properties in terms of sequence features and network organization, and use them to design an accurate diagnostic tool for predicting SARS-CoV-2 status from repertoire data.
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Affiliation(s)
- María Ruiz Ortega
- Laboratoire de physique de l’École Normale Supérieure, CNRS, PSL University, Sorbonne Université, and Université de Paris, Paris, France
| | - Natanael Spisak
- Laboratoire de physique de l’École Normale Supérieure, CNRS, PSL University, Sorbonne Université, and Université de Paris, Paris, France
| | - Thierry Mora
- Laboratoire de physique de l’École Normale Supérieure, CNRS, PSL University, Sorbonne Université, and Université de Paris, Paris, France
| | - Aleksandra M. Walczak
- Laboratoire de physique de l’École Normale Supérieure, CNRS, PSL University, Sorbonne Université, and Université de Paris, Paris, France
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7
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Blazso P, Csomos K, Tipton CM, Ujhazi B, Walter JE. Lineage Reconstruction of In Vitro Identified Antigen-Specific Autoreactive B Cells from Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoires. Int J Mol Sci 2022; 24:ijms24010225. [PMID: 36613668 PMCID: PMC9820449 DOI: 10.3390/ijms24010225] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2022] [Revised: 12/15/2022] [Accepted: 12/20/2022] [Indexed: 12/25/2022] Open
Abstract
The emergence, survival, growth and maintenance of autoreactive (AR) B-cell clones, the hallmark of humoral autoimmunity, leave their footprints in B-cell receptor repertoires. Collecting IgH sequences related to polyreactive (PR) ones from adaptive immune receptor repertoire (AIRR) datasets make the reconstruction and analysis of PR/AR B-cell lineages possible. We developed a computational approach, named ImmChainTracer, to extract members and to visualize clonal relationships of such B-cell lineages. Our approach was successfully applied on the IgH repertoires of patients suffering from monogenic hypomorphic RAG1 and 2 deficiency (pRD) or polygenic systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) autoimmune diseases to identify relatives of AR IgH sequences and to track their fate in AIRRs. Signs of clonal expansion, affinity maturation and class-switching events in PR/AR and non-PR/AR B-cell lineages were revealed. An extension of our method towards B-cell expansion caused by any trigger (e.g., infection, vaccination or antibody development) may provide deeper insight into antigen specific B-lymphogenesis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter Blazso
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Szeged, 6720 Szeged, Hungary
- Division of Pediatric Allergy/Immunology, University of South Florida at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA
- Correspondence: (P.B.); (J.E.W.)
| | - Krisztian Csomos
- Division of Pediatric Allergy/Immunology, University of South Florida at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA
| | - Christopher M. Tipton
- Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA
| | - Boglarka Ujhazi
- Division of Pediatric Allergy/Immunology, University of South Florida at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA
| | - Jolan E. Walter
- Division of Pediatric Allergy/Immunology, University of South Florida at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA
- Division of Allergy and Immunology, Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, Boston, MA 02114, USA
- Correspondence: (P.B.); (J.E.W.)
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