Novel Approaches to Analyze Immunoglobulin Repertoires

Analysis of immunoglobulin (Ig) repertoires aims to comprehend Ig diversity with the goal of predicting humoral immune responses in the context of infection, vaccination, autoimmunity, and malignancies. The first next-generation sequencing (NGS) analyses of bulk B cell populations dramatically advanced sampling depth over previous low-throughput single-cell-based protocols, albeit at the expense of accuracy and loss of chain-pairing information. In recent years the field has substantially differentiated, with bulk analyses becoming more accurate while single-cell approaches have gained in throughput. Additionally, new platforms striving to combine high throughput and chain pairing have been developed as well as various computational tools for analysis. Here we review the developments of the past 4–5 years and discuss the open challenges.