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Updated: Aug 27, 2026
A Contusion Model of Severe Spinal Cord Injury in Rats
Published on: August 17, 2013
Longitudinal B Cell Receptor Repertoire Profiling of Heavy- and Light-Chain Features in Injured Rat Spinal Cord
Taotao Lin1, Chao Qin1, Ruixiong Du1
1Department of Orthopedics, Fujian Medical University Union Hospital, Fuzhou, Fujian, People's Republic of China.
Purpose:
B cell receptor (BCR) repertoire features detectable in injured spinal cord tissue after traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) remain poorly characterized. This study performed an exploratory longitudinal analysis of immunoglobulin heavy-chain (IGH) and light-chain (IGL) repertoire features in injured rat spinal cord tissue.
Methods:
Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats underwent traumatic SCI using a modified Allen's weight-drop model. Lesion-centered spinal cord tissues were collected at 1, 3, 7, 14, and 28 days post-injury, with four biological replicates per time point. BCR repertoire sequencing was used to assess functional sequence composition, isotype or constant-region distribution, sequencing saturation, diversity indices, germline-divergence metrics, V/J gene usage, V-J pairing, CDR3 length distribution, dominant clonotype abundance, and repertoire similarity. Uninjured baseline libraries failed construction; therefore, analyses were restricted to post-injury samples and interpreted descriptively.
Results:
Productive BCR sequences were detected across injured spinal cord samples, and saturation curves supported repertoire coverage in most samples. IGH repertoires showed greater inter-sample heterogeneity in isotype composition, diversity indices, germline-divergence metrics, V/J gene usage, V-J pairing, CDR3 length distribution, dominant clonotype abundance, and clonotype sharing. In contrast, IGL repertoires were predominantly IgK-associated and showed a restricted CDR3 length distribution centered at 11 amino acids, with higher repertoire sharing. These heavy- and light-chain contrasts are best interpreted as repertoire-architecture differences within the post-injury dataset.
Conclusion:
Injured male rat spinal cord tissue contained detectable BCR repertoire signals with descriptive variation across post-injury time points, supporting the feasibility of longitudinal repertoire profiling in this setting. These data provide a receptor-level resource for SCI neuroimmunology and support future studies to clarify antigen specificity, functional relevance, and translational potential of post-injury B-cell responses.
