Bioinformatics Seminar
Time: 11AM
Venue: Davis Auditorium and Online
14 November 2023
The performance of CHM13-T2T genome in antibody isotype calling
Junli NieWEHI Immunology Division
The production of antibody by members of the B-cell lineage is essential for protective immunity. The antibody-secreting cell has the capacity to produce only a single antibody specificity. Based on this classical, " one cell one antibody " dogma, analysis of single cell RNA sequencing data of antibody-secreting cells should reveal that each cell expresses only a single form of each of the immunoglobulin heavy and light chains. However, when using GRCh38 as the genome reference, many antibody-secreting cells appear to express multiple immunoglobulin isotypes. When the newly published T2T-CHM13 genome is instead used as the genome reference, every antibody-secreting cell is shown to express a unique isotype. Read mapping ambiguity is also resolved when GRCh38 is replaced by T2T-CHM13. These studies reveal that the choice of genome reference affects antibody isotype calling performance and emphasize the importance of considering the genetic background of both the reference genome and sequencing data.