Proteogenomics for the Comprehensive Analysis of Human Cellular and Serum Antibody Repertoires

The vast repertoire of immunoglobulins produced by the immune system is a consequence of the huge amount of antigens to which we are exposed every day. The diversity of these immunoglobulins is due to different mechanisms (including VDJ recombination, somatic hypermutation, and antigen selection). Understanding how the immune system is capable of generating this diversity and which are the molecular bases of the composition of immunoglobulins are key challenges in the immunological field. During the last decades, several techniques have emerged as promising strategies to achieve these goals, but it is their combination which appears to be the fruitful solution for increasing the knowledge about human cellular and serum antibody repertoires. In this chapter, we address the diverse strategies focused on the analysis of immunoglobulin repertoires as well as the characterization of the genomic and peptide sequences. Moreover, the advantages of combining various -omics approaches are discussed through review different published studies, showing the benefits in clinical areas.