What is the AKC?
The adaptive immune system relies on B cell receptors (BCRs) and T cell receptors (TCRs) to recognize and respond to a vast array of pathogens. These receptors, collectively known as adaptive immune receptors (AIRs), form diverse repertoires (AIRRs) that are crucial for immune defense, vaccine responses, and therapeutic development. Over time, various specialized repositories have been established to store complementary data on AIRs. These include (1) large-scale AIRR datasets annotated with individual-specific metadata, such as disease states, (2) AIR-antigen specificity information determined by experimental assays, and (3) genomic datasets influencing the AIRR diversity of individuals. The AIRR Knowledge Commons (AKC) aims to integrate diverse data resources into a unified platform, and enable comprehensive queries and application of cross-cutting knowledge generation algorithms across heterogeneous datasets, thereby enhancing the utility of AIRR data for immunological research and clinical applications.
How can I query the AKC?
The AKC is currently still under development. Once operational, users will be able to perform comprehensive searches on the integrated data. Such search queries may include:
- AIRR metadata, such as disease diagnoses,
- AIR-antigen specificity, including similarity to previously reported AIRs with known specificity,
- AIR gene usage, to uncover biased gene usage or predispositions to specific diseases,
- and many more options!
How can I contribute data to the AKC?
The AKC sources its data from its different component repositories. To contribute, please submit your data to the appropriate repository, so it can be integrated into the AKC. Please read the Repositories page for more information. We are furthermore in the process of developing submission protocols which will simplify the AIRR study data submission.
We would like to hear from you!
As we are still in the process of developing this resource, your feedback may help shape the AKC! What questions would you like to be able to answer about (your) data in the AKC? What querying capability do you feel like is missing from the currently available resources? Feel free to let us know by sending an email to airr-knowledge@utsouthwestern.edu.