Click here for Human Germline reference sets!

Click here for Mouse Germline reference sets!

You do not need to create an account to use this site. If you want to download reference sets, please click on the links above. If you would like to know more about our work, please read the welcome text and news items below.

Welcome to OGRDB - the curated Open Germline Receptor Database!

The immune receptors of B and T cells are central to the body's response to pathogens, and implicated in autoimmune disease. High-throughput sequencing of receptor repertoires - AIRR-Seq - is widely used to study receptor development, however a comprehensive understanding of the genes from which development starts - the germline genes - is crucial for accurate interpretation. Our knowledge of human receptor alleles is incomplete, and that of other species at an early stage. OGRDB is an open database of newly discovered alleles, through which researchers can contribute newly discovered alleles for analysis, and download those that have been reviewed and affirmed. Read more...

Latest News

Novel Allele Submission Process Simplified

Following an IARC decision in December 2023, the submission process for inferred novel alleles has been simplified. Previously, it was necessary to deposit the sequence of each inferred allele in GenBank or ENA, and it was usually necessary to accompany this with an extracted set of reads from the repertoire that provided explicit support for… Continue reading Novel Allele Submission Process Simplified

Published 2023-12-31

Germline Databases, or adventures into the allelic underworld

If you are interested in receptor germlines, you might enjoy this On-AIRR podcast with Corey Watson and William Lees, hosted by Ulrik Stervbo and Zhaoqing Ding. “In this episode we talk about the recent work by the Germline Database Working Group of the AIRR-Community. The accuracy of V and J gene segment assignment improves with… Continue reading Germline Databases, or adventures into the allelic underworld

Published 2023-11-02

Human IG germline sets now available

Germline sets for human IGH, IGK and IGL are now available for download. They are described in a forthcoming publication, “AIRR-C Human IG Reference Sets: curated sets of immunoglobulin heavy and light chain germline genes”, currently available from Biorxiv as a preprint. Our aim with these sets is to provide high-quality, evidenced collections that are… Continue reading Human IG germline sets now available

Published 2023-09-08

Downloading germline sets from the command line or API

In this post, we’re going to look briefly at the different ways that you can download germline sets from the command line, or from code. We want to make germline sets on OGRDB as easy to work with as possible, and making them available for download conveniently is an important part of that, so that… Continue reading Downloading germline sets from the command line or API

Published 2023-07-21

Germline Set format updates

The JSON format in which germline sets are distributed has been updated (germline sets are also available from OGRDB in FASTA format, but the JSON format provides much richer information). The revised format is compliant with the latest development version of the AIRR schema, which is expected to be released as an update in the… Continue reading Germline Set format updates

Published 2023-06-27

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 contact us.

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