TY - JOUR T1 - Structural Diversity of B-Cell Receptor Repertoires along the B-cell Differentiation Axis in Humans and Mice JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/762880 SP - 762880 AU - Aleksandr Kovaltsuk AU - Matthew I. J. Raybould AU - Wing Ki Wong AU - Claire Marks AU - Sebastian Kelm AU - James Snowden AU - Johannes Trück AU - Charlotte M. Deane Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/09/09/762880.abstract N2 - Most current analysis tools for antibody next-generation sequencing data work with primary sequence descriptors, leaving accompanying structural information unharnessed. We have used novel rapid methods to structurally characterize the paratopes of more than 180 million human and mouse B-cell receptor (BCR) repertoire sequences. These structurally annotated paratopes provide unprecedented insights into both the structural predetermination and dynamics of the adaptive immune response. We show that B-cell types can be distinguished based solely on these structural properties. Antigen-unexperienced BCR repertoires use the highest number and diversity of paratope structures and these patterns of naïve repertoire paratope usage are highly conserved across subjects. In contrast, more differentiated B-cells are more personalized in terms of paratope structure usage. Our results establish the paratope structure differences in BCR repertoires and have applications for many fields including immunodiagnostics, phage display library generation, and “humanness” assessment of BCR repertoires from transgenic animals. ER -