IMGT/JunctionAnalysis: the first tool for the analysis of the immunoglobulin and T cell receptor complex V-J and V-D-J JUNCTIONs.

MOTIVATION: To create the enormous diversity of 10(12) immunoglobulins (IG) and T cell receptors (TR) per individual, very complex mechanisms occur at the DNA level: the combinatorial diversity results from the junction of the variable (V), diversity (D) and joining (J) genes; the N-diversity represents the addition at random of nucleotides not encoded in the genome; and somatic hypermutations occur in IG rearranged sequences. The accurate annotation of the junction between V, D, J genes in rearranged IG and TR sequences represents therefore a huge challenge by its uniqueness and complexity. We developed IMGT/JunctionAnalysis to analyse automatically in detail the IG and TR junctions, according to the IMGT Scientific chart rules, based on the IMGT-ONTOLOGY concepts. RESULTS: IMGT/JunctionAnalysis is the first tool for the detailed analysis of the IG and TR complex V-J and V-D-J JUNCTION(s). It delimits, at the nucleotide level, the genes resulting from the combinatorial diversity. It identifies accurately the D genes in the junctions of IG heavy (IGH), TR beta (TRB) and delta (TRD) chains. It delimits the palindromic P-REGION(s) and the N-REGION(s) resulting from the N-diversity. It evaluates the number of somatic hypermutations for each gene, within the JUNCTION. IMGT/JunctionAnalysis is capable of analysing, in a single run, an unlimited number of junctions from the same species (currently human or mouse) and from the same locus. AVAILABILITY: IMGT/JunctionAnalysis is available from the IMGT Home page at http://imgt.cines.fr

IMGT-ONTOLOGY for immunogenetics and immunoinformatics.

IMGT, the international ImMunoGeneTics information system(R) (http://imgt.cines.fr), is a high quality integrated knowledge resource specializing in immunoglobulins (IG), T cell receptors (TR), major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and related proteins of the immune system (RPI) of human and other vertebrates, created in 1989, by the Laboratoire d'ImmunoGenetique Moleculaire LIGM. IMGT provides a common access to standardized data which include nucleotide and protein sequences, oligonucleotide primers, gene maps, genetic polymorphisms, specificities, 2D and 3D structures. IMGT consists of several sequence databases (IMGT/LIGM-DB, IMGT/MHC-DB, IMGT/PRIMER-DB), one genome database (IMGT/GENE-DB) and one three-dimensional structure database (IMGT/3Dstructure-DB), interactive tools for sequence analysis (IMGT/V-QUEST, IMGT/JunctionAnalysis, IMGT/PhyloGene, IMGT/Allele-Align), for genome analysis (IMGT/GeneSearch, IMGT/GeneView, IMGT/LocusView) and for 3D structure analysis (IMGT/StructuralQuery), and Web resources ("IMGT Marie-Paule page") comprising 8000 HTML pages. IMGT other accesses include SRS, FTP, search by BLAST, etc. By its high quality and its easy data distribution, IMGT has important implications in medical research (repertoire in autoimmune diseases, AIDS, leukemias, lymphomas, myelomas), veterinary research, genome diversity and genome evolution studies of the adaptive immune responses, biotechnology related to antibody engineering (scFv, phage displays, combinatorial libraries) and therapeutical approaches (grafts, immunotherapy). IMGT is freely available at http://imgt.cines.fr.