Welcome to OGRDB - the curated Open Germline Receptor Database!

News

• Sixteen alleles have been affirmed by IARC to date. You can find them on the Sequences tab.
• OGRDB is announced in Nucleic Acids Research:
  OGRDB: a reference database of inferred immune receptor genes
  Lees et al., Nucleic Acids Research, September 2019.
• OGRDB is now accepting V- and J- sequence inferences from the human BCR light and heavy chain. Analysis scripts and submission pages have been updated accordingly.
• The Submission page now accepts accession numbers from ENA as well as NIH SRA. If you encounter any issues with your accession numbers, or are unsure exactly which to quote, please post a message in the Support Forum.
• AIRR's Germline Database Working Group has published a paper announcing and documenting the inferred allele review process:
  Inferred Allelic Variants of Immunoglobulin Receptor Genes: A System for Their Evaluation, Documentation, and Naming
  Ohlin et al., Frontiers in Immunology, 2019.
• If you need any support or further information, please ask in the Forum. Please register in the Forum if you would like to receive occasional updates.

Introduction to OGRDB

In recent years it has become possible to sequence immune receptor repertoires (immunoglobulins and T cell receptors) at great depth. The accurate analysis of these repertoires requires a comprehensive understanding of the germline genes that give rise to the repertoire through V(D)J gene recombination.

Even for well-studied species such as humans and mice, our knowledge of allelic variation is incomplete. Identifying new immunoglobulin and T cell receptor polymorphisms from the genome using traditional methods is technically challenging, because of the complex sequence architecture and repetitive nature of these loci. More recently, methods have been developed to infer novel sequences and alleles from sequenced repertoires.

The Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire (AIRR) Community was formed to promote and share good practice in adaptive immune repertoire sequencing. In 2017, it established the Inferred Allele Review Committee (IARC) to evaluate inferred alleles for inclusion in relevant germline databases. IARC's work is outlined in more detail in a poster, which was presented at a Systems Immunology Workshop at the University of Surrey, England, in March 2018, and in a recent paper. IARC has worked, together with colleagues at IMGT and the US National Institute of Health, to establish a systematic submission and review process. OGRDB was created and designed to support that process, and provide a real-time record of affirmed sequences. Affirmed sequences will be listed under the Sequences tab above, and the submissions that underpin them will be found under the Submissions tab. You can make your own submissions by following the steps below.

For further information on OGRDB, please see
OGRDB: a reference database of inferred immune receptor genes. You can also view a diagram of the key data items held in OGRDB.

How to submit your sequences

As a first step, IARC is now ready to review submissions of inferred human IGHV genes and alleles. These sequences may be novel, or may extend incomplete sequences currently in the IMGT reference directories. Researchers interested in submitting sequences should:

• Submit sequence and data to Genbank or ENA, following the Genbank/ENA Workflow.
• Submit the inferred sequences to IARC via OGRDB, following the OGRDB Submission Guide.

It is hoped to open the review process to a wider range of species and loci shortly.

Citation

If you use OGRDB in your research, please cite this paper:
OGRDB: a reference database of inferred immune receptor genes
Lees et al., Nucleic Acids Research, September 2019.

Acknowledgements and citations for individual sequences are provided under each sequence and submission.

Contacts and Support

For help in using OGRDB, or if you encounter any issues, please consult the Support Forum and raise any questions or problems there.

The site is developed and maintained by William Lees (william@lees.org.uk)