Landscape of Variable Domain of Heavy-chain-only Antibody Repertoire from Alpaca.

Landscape of Variable Domain of Heavy-chain-only Antibody Repertoire from Alpaca. Immunology. 2020 Jun 07;: Authors: Tu Z, Huang X, Fu J, Hu N, Zheng W, Li Y, Zhang Y Abstract Heavy-chain-only antibodies (HCAbs), which are devoid of light chains, have been found naturally occurring in various species including camelids and cartilaginous fish. Due to their high thermostability, refoldability, and capacity for cell permeation, the variable regions of heavy chain of HCAbs (VHHs) have been widely used in diagnosis, bio-image, food safety, and therapeutics. Most immunogenetic and functional studies of HCAbs are based on case studies or a limited number of low throughput sequencing data. A complete picture derived from more abundant high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data can help us gain deeper insights. Thus, we cloned and sequenced the full-length coding region of VHHs in Alpaca (Vicugna pacos) via HTS in this study. A new pipeline was developed to conduct an in-depth analysis of the HCAbs repertoires. Various critical features, including the length distribution of complementary determining region 3 (CDR3), V(D)J usage, VJ pairing, germline specific mutation rate, and germline specific scoring profiles (GSSPs), were systematically characterized. The quantitative data show that V(D)J usage and VHHs recombination are highly biased. Interestingly, we found that the average CDR3 length of classical VHHs is longer than that of non-classical on...
Source: Immunology - Category: Allergy & Immunology Authors: Tags: Immunology Source Type: research