title: Studying Antibody Repertoires with Next-Generation Sequencing.
abstract: Next-generation sequencing is making it possible to study the antibody repertoire of an organism in unprecedented detail, and, by so doing, to characterize its behavior in the response to infection and in pathological conditions such as autoimmunity and cancer. The polymorphic nature of the repertoire poses unique challenges that rule out the use of many commonly used NGS methods and require tradeoffs to be made when considering experimental design.We outline the main contexts in which antibody repertoire analysis has been used, and summarize the key tools that are available. The humoral immune response to vaccination has been a particular focus of repertoire analyses, and we review the key conclusions and methods used in these studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences and Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK.
authors.forename: William D
authors.initials: WD
authors.lastname: Lees
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences and Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK. a.shepherd@mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Adrian J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Shepherd
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000906:Antibodies / Q000235:genetics*; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D056724:Immunity, Humoral / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D000906:Antibodies
keywords: Antibodies; Antibodyome; Next generation sequencing; Rep-Seq; Repertoire analysis