title: AL-Base: a visual platform analysis tool for the study of amyloidogenic immunoglobulin light chain sequences.
abstract: AL-Base, a curated database of human immunoglobulin (Ig) light chain (LC) sequences derived from patients with AL amyloidosis and controls, is described, along with a collection of analytical and graphic tools designed to facilitate their analysis. AL-Base is designed to compile and analyse amyloidogenic Ig LC sequences and to compare their predicted protein sequence and structure to non-amyloidogenic LC sequences. Currently, the database contains over 3000 de-identified LC nucleotide and amino acid sequences, of which 433 encode monoclonal proteins that were reported to form fibrillar deposits in AL patients. Each sequence is categorised according to germline gene usage, clinical status and sample source. Currently, tools are available to search for sequences by various criteria, to analyse the biochemical properties of the predicted amino acids at each position and to display the results in a graphical fashion. The likelihood that each sequence has evolved through somatic hypermutation can be predicted using an automated binomial or multinomial distribution model. AL-Base is available to the scientific community for research purposes.
authors.affiliation: Amyloid Treatment and Research Program, Alan and Sandra Gerry Amyloid Research Laboratory, Boston University School of Medicine, 715 Albany Street, Boston, MA 02118, USA. kbodi@bu.edu
authors.forename: Kip
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bodi
authors.forename: Tatiana
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Prokaeva
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Spencer
authors.forename: Maurya
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Eberhard
authors.forename: Lawreen H
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Connors
authors.forename: David C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Seldin
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000686:Amyloidosis / Q000235:genetics*; D001483:Base Sequence; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D006801:Humans; D007147:Immunoglobulin Light Chains / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016415:Sequence Alignment
chemical_list: D007147:Immunoglobulin Light Chains