TCR_Explore: A novel webtool for T cell receptor repertoire analysis

Area of Science:

• Immunology
• Bioinformatics
• Computational Biology

Background:

• T cell receptors (TCRs) are crucial for adaptive immunity, with diverse TCR repertoires essential for pathogen defense.
• Existing TCR profiling tools often require coding expertise, limiting accessibility and efficiency.
• Manual data processing in current pipelines can lead to errors and inefficiencies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a user-friendly webtool, TCR_Explore, for analyzing T cell receptor (TCR) clonotypic signatures.
• To provide an accessible platform for researchers regardless of their coding proficiency.
• To facilitate in-depth TCR repertoire analysis for identifying T cell clonotypes linked to health and disease.

Main Methods:

• Development of a bespoke web application, TCR_Explore.
• Integration of analysis capabilities for both Sanger sequencing and next-generation sequencing (NGS) data.
• Implementation of automated quality control for Sanger sequencing data and a universal file format for flexible data analysis.

Main Results:

• TCR_Explore enables users without coding expertise to analyze TCR repertoire datasets.
• The tool supports data derived from both Sanger and NGS platforms.
• Automated QC and flexible figure generation enhance the analysis process.

Conclusions:

• TCR_Explore democratizes TCR repertoire analysis, making it accessible to a wider research community.
• The webtool streamlines the identification of disease-associated T cell clonotypes.
• This platform empowers researchers to conduct comprehensive TCR repertoire studies on new and existing datasets.