Single cell RNA-sequencing of PBMC derived B cells from human healthy donor

Motivation: The B-cell receptor (BCR) performs essential functions for the adaptive immune system including recognition of pathogen-derived antigens. The vast repertoire and adaptive variation of BCR sequences due to V(D)J recombination and somatic hypermutation (SHM) necessitates single-cell characterization of BCR sequences. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) presents the opportunity for simultaneous capture of paired BCR heavy and light chains and the transcriptomic signature. Results: We developed VDJPuzzle, a novel bioinformatic tool that reconstructs productive, full-length B-cell receptor sequences of both heavy and light chains. VDJPuzzle successfully reconstructed BCRs from 98.3% (n=117) human and 96.5% (n=200) murine B cells. The reconstructed BCRs were successfully validated with single-cell Sanger sequencing. Availability: VDJPuzzle is available at https://bitbucket.org/kirbyvisp/vdjpuzzle2