Reconstructing a B-cell clonal lineage. I. Statistical inference of unobserved ancestors.

ABSTRACT: One of the key phenomena in the adaptive immune response to infection and immunization is affinity maturation, during which antibody genes are mutated and selected, typically resulting in a substantial increase in binding affinity to the eliciting antigen. Advances in technology on several fronts have made it possible to clone large numbers of heavy-chain light-chain pairs from individual B cells and thereby identify whole sets of clonally related antibodies. These collections could provide the information necessary to reconstruct their own history - the sequence of changes introduced into the lineage during the development of the clone - and to study affinity maturation in detail. But the success of such a program depends entirely on accurately inferring the founding ancestor and the othe

SUBMITTER: Kepler TB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3901458 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature