Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.
Sec. Comparative Immunology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1427075

High throughput long-read sequencing of circulating lymphocytes of the evolutionarily distant sea lamprey reveals diversity and common elements of the variable lymphocyte receptor B (VLRB) repertoire

Provisionally accepted
Amin Zia Amin Zia 1Ariel Orozco Ariel Orozco 2Irene S. Fang Irene S. Fang 2Aspen M. Tang Aspen M. Tang 2Ana S. Mendoza Viruega Ana S. Mendoza Viruega 2Shilan Dong Shilan Dong 2Leslie Leung Leslie Leung 2Vijaya M. Devraj Vijaya M. Devraj 2Opeyemi E. Oludada Opeyemi E. Oludada 2Goetz Ehrhardt Goetz Ehrhardt 2*
  • 1 Independent researcher, Toronto, Canada
  • 2 University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The leucine-rich repeat-based variable lymphocyte receptor B (VLRB) antibody system of jawless vertebrates is capable of generating an antibody repertoire equal to or exceeding the diversity of antibody repertoires of jawed vertebrates. Unlike immunoglobulin-based immune repertoires, the VLRB repertoire diversity is characterized by variable lengths of VLRB encoding transcripts, rendering conventional immunoreceptor repertoire sequencing approaches unsuitable for VLRB repertoire sequencing. Here we demonstrate that long-read single-molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing (PacBio) approaches permit the efficient large-scale assessment of the VLRB repertoire. We present a computational pipeline for sequence data processing and provide the first repertoirebased analysis of VLRB protein characteristics including properties of its subunits and regions of diversity within each structural leucine-rich repeat subunit. Our study provides a template to explore changes in the VLRB repertoire during immune responses and to establish large scale VLRB repertoire databases for computational approaches aimed at isolating monoclonal VLRB reagents for biomedical research and clinical applications.

    Keywords: Variable lymphocyte receptor, Jawless vertebrates, immune repertoire, Antibodies, longread sequencing

    Received: 02 May 2024; Accepted: 22 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zia, Orozco, Fang, Tang, Mendoza Viruega, Dong, Leung, Devraj, Oludada and Ehrhardt. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Goetz Ehrhardt, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.