Massively parallel single-cell B-cell receptor sequencing enables rapid discovery of diverse antigen-reactive antibodies

Abstract

Using high-throughput single-cell B-cell receptor sequencing (scBCR-seq) we obtained accurately paired full-length heavy- and light-chain variable domains from thousands of individual B cells in a massively parallel fashion. We sequenced more than 250,000 B cells from rat, mouse and human repertoires to characterize their lineages and expansion. In addition, we immunized rats with chicken ovalbumin and profiled antigen-reactive B cells from lymph nodes of immunized animals. The scBCR-seq data recovered 81% (n = 56/69) of B-cell lineages identified from hybridomas generated from the same set of B cells that were subjected to scBCR-seq. Importantly, scBCR-seq identified an additional 710 candidate lineages that were not recovered as hybridomas. We synthesized, expressed and tested 93 clones from the identified lineages and found that 99% (n = 92/93) of the clones were antigen-reactive. Our results establish scBCR-seq as a powerful tool for antibody discovery.