Signatures of selection in the human antibody repertoire: Selective sweeps, competing subclones, and neutral drift.

ABSTRACT: Antibodies are created and refined by somatic evolution in B cell populations, which endows the human immune system with the ability to recognize and eliminate diverse pathogens. However, the evolutionary processes that sculpt antibody repertoires remain poorly understood. Here, using an unbiased repertoire-scale approach, we show that the population genetic signatures of evolution are evident in human B cell lineages and reveal how antibodies evolve somatically. We measured the dynamics and genetic diversity of B cell responses in five adults longitudinally before and after influenza vaccination using high-throughput antibody repertoire sequencing. We identified vaccine-responsive B cell lineages that carry signatures of selective sweeps driven by positive selection, and discovered that t

SUBMITTER: Horns F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6347681 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature