The whole-organism heavy chain B cell repertoire from Zebrafish self-organizes into distinct network features

Background  

The adaptive immune system is based on selected populations of molecularly distinct individual B and T cell clones. However, it has not been possible to characterize these clones in a comprehensive and informatics manner to date; attempts have been limited by the number of cells in the adaptive immune system and an inability to quantify them. Recently, using the Zebrafish (ZF) Danio rerio as a model organism and parallel sequencing as the quantifying technology, Weinstein et al. overcame this major hurdle and quantified the entire heavy chain B-cell repertoire in ZF. Here, we present a novel network analysis of the data from the Weinstein group, providing new insights into the network structure of the B-cell repertoire.