UC Santa Cruz

Antibodies are created through a unique mechanism whereby different gene segments at the antibody loci are semi-randomly recombined to form functional antibody genes. This process allows that adaptive immune system to generate protection against a near-infinite array of pathogens, however it presents unique challenges from a sequencing prospective. I present three projects addressing problems facing the repertoire sequencing community including a method for full-length antibody transcript sequencing, a method for heavy and light chain pairing in single B cells, and a method for generating repertoires as a byproduct of a general polyA RNA sequencing protocol.