Characterization of B-cell receptor repertoire associated with asymptomatic and symptomatic infections of SARS-CoV-2

The immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infections are very complex and remain to be further characterized. In this study, we performed the single-cell B-cell receptor (BCR) sequencing (scBCR-seq) of the PBMC samples from the healthy controls and SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals with various clinical presentations, and subsequently analyzed the abundance, diversity and difference of BCR repertoire in different groups of COVID-19 patients and the healthy controls, respectively. We identified a number of unique heavy or light chain VDJ genes pairs and combinational preference in each group, such as IGKV3-7 enriched in the asymptomatic subjects, whereas IGHV3-23-IGHJ4, IGHV1-18–IGLV3-19, IGHV1-18–IGLV3-21, and IGHV1-1–IGLV3-25 enriched in the recovery patients from the severe diseases. These findings may advance our understanding of the B-cell mediated immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infections and help develop novel vaccine candidates and therapeutic antibodies against COVID-19. Overall design: 53 peripheral blood mono-nuclear cell (PBMC) samples including 42 COVID-19 patients derived samples and 11 healthy controls (HCs) derived samples