Gene Discovery and Expression Analysis of the B Cell Receptor Repertoire in the Domestic Ferret Model

The domestic ferret is the preferred model organism for the study of influenza A infection and responses to vaccination but has remained underutilized in antibody-omics research to inform vaccine design. This study used a curated set of V(D)J genes from human and closely related carnivores to BLAST the ferret genome to define a reference immunoglobulin repertoire for the ferret. Immunoglobulin transcript expression was analyzed for both variable and constant region genes to identify two functional IGHG genes in the ferret. A publicly available workflow for discovering immunoglobulin genes in any species is now available, as well as a complete ferret immunoglobulin gene set with genomic sequences for 409 heavy and light chain ferret immunoglobulin genes.