Methods for sequence and structural analysis of B and T cell receptor repertoires

Area of Science:

• Immunology and Bioinformatics
• Computational Biology
• Structural Biology

Background:

• B cell receptors (BCRs) and T cell receptors (TCRs) form a critical defense network distinguishing self from non-self.
• Analysis of BCR and TCR repertoires is vital for immunology and biotechnology due to their high diversity.
• Specialized bioinformatics methods are essential for extracting meaningful data from immune receptor sequences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent advancements in bioinformatics tools for BCR and TCR repertoire analysis.
• To emphasize tools that integrate structural features into immune receptor data analysis.
• To cover sequencing technologies, structural modeling, clustering, and downstream applications.

Main Methods:

• Survey of recent sequencing technologies for immune receptor repertoires.
• Review of structural modeling and clustering methods for BCR and TCRs.
• Discussion of downstream analyses including epitope prediction and molecular dynamics.

Main Results:

• Identification of specialized bioinformatics tools for analyzing diverse BCR and TCR repertoires.
• Emphasis on the utility of structural features in immune receptor repertoire analysis.
• Overview of methods for antibody-antigen docking and TCR-peptide-MHC modeling.

Conclusions:

• Advancements in bioinformatics tools are crucial for understanding complex immune receptor repertoires.
• Integrating structural information enhances the analysis of BCR and TCR sequence data.
• These tools support applications ranging from basic immunology to biotechnology and drug discovery.