Deep Sequencing of B Cell Receptor Repertoires From COVID-19 Patients Reveals Strong Convergent Immune Signatures
Authors
Galson, Jacob D.
Schaetzle, Sebastian
Bashford-Rogers, Rachael J. M.
Raybould, Matthew I. J.
Kovaltsuk, Aleksandr
Kilpatrick, Gavin J.
Minter, Ralph
Finch, Donna K.
Dias, Jorge
James, Louisa K.
Thomas, Gavin
Lee, Wing-Yiu Jason
Betley, Jason
Cavlan, Olivia
Leech, Alex
Deane, Charlotte M.
Seoane, Joan
Caldas, Carlos
Pennington, Daniel J.
Pfeffer, Paul
Osbourn, Jane
Publication Date
2020-12-15Journal Title
Frontiers in Immunology
Publisher
Frontiers Media S.A.
Volume
11
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Galson, J. D., Schaetzle, S., Bashford-Rogers, R. J. M., Raybould, M. I. J., Kovaltsuk, A., Kilpatrick, G. J., Minter, R., et al. (2020). Deep Sequencing of B Cell Receptor Repertoires From COVID-19 Patients Reveals Strong Convergent Immune Signatures. Frontiers in Immunology, 11 https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2020.605170
Abstract
Deep sequencing of B cell receptor (BCR) heavy chains from a cohort of 31 COVID-19 patients from the UK reveals a stereotypical naive immune response to SARS-CoV-2 which is consistent across patients. Clonal expansion of the B cell population is also observed and may be the result of memory bystander effects. There was a strong convergent sequence signature across patients, and we identified 1,254 clonotypes convergent between at least four of the COVID-19 patients, but not present in healthy controls or individuals following seasonal influenza vaccination. A subset of the convergent clonotypes were homologous to known SARS and SARS-CoV-2 spike protein neutralizing antibodies. Convergence was also demonstrated across wide geographies by comparison of data sets between patients from UK, USA, and China, further validating the disease association and consistency of the stereotypical immune response even at the sequence level. These convergent clonotypes provide a resource to identify potential therapeutic and prophylactic antibodies and demonstrate the potential of BCR profiling as a tool to help understand patient responses.
Keywords
Immunology, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, B-cell repertoire, BCR, antibody, convergence
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2020.605170
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/315628
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Licence URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.