Dr Adrian Shepherd’s computational immunology group are now hosting two databases – OGRDB and VDJbase – that focus on the analysis of large immune repertoire datasets.
The Open Germline Receptor Database (OGRDB) was developed in collaboration with members of the Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire (AIRR) Community, and is used to support the inference of novel germline genes from B- and T-cell repertoires. Genetic differences in the loci that encode B- and T-cell receptors are poorly characterised by conventional genome sequencing; a better understanding of such differences may help to explain why individuals often respond differently to pathogens, vaccines and biotherapeutics. This work is published in leading edge research publication Nucleic Acids Research.
Whereas OGRDB is about individual genes, VDJbase is about whole genotypes and haplotypes – the complete sets of immunoglobulin genes that are expressed by different individuals. This resource supports a range of different kinds of analysis, including the inference of gene deletions within a single haplotype, and the estimation of gene heterozygosity within a population. Originally developed by Gur Yaari’s lab at Bar-Ilan University, VDJbase is now co-developed and hosted at Birkbeck, and is also published in NAR.