Antigen Receptor Sequence Reconstruction and Clonality Inference from scRNA-Seq Data

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe TraCeR and BraCeR, our computational tools for reconstruction of paired full-length antigen receptor sequences and clonality inference from single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) data. In brief, TraCeR reconstructs T-cell receptor (TCR) sequences from scRNA-seq data by extracting sequencing reads derived from TCRs by aligning the reads from each cell against synthetic TCR sequences. TCR-derived reads are then assembled into full-length recombined TCR sequences. BraCeR builds on the TraCeR pipeline and accounts for somatic hypermutations (SHM) and isotype switching. Here we discuss experimental design, use of the tools, and interpretation of the results.

Keywords: Antigen receptor reconstruction; BCR; Bracer; Immunoglobulin; RNA-seq; Single cell; TCR; Tracer; scRNA-seq.