Characterization of the ferret TRB locus guided by V, D, J, and C gene expression analysis

Gerritsen, Bram; Pandit, Aridaman; Zaaraoui-Boutahar, Fatiha; van den Hout, Mirjam C. G. N.; van IJcken, Wilfred F. J.; de Boer, Rob J.; Andeweg, Arno C.

The domestic ferret, Mustela putorius furo, is an important mammalian animal model to study human respiratory infection. However, insufficient genomic annotation hampers detailed studies of ferret T cell responses. In this study, we analyzed the published T cell receptor beta (TRB) locus and performed high-throughput sequencing (HTS) of peripheral blood of four healthy adult ferrets to identify expressed V, D, J, and C genes. The HTS data is used as a guide to manually curate the expressed V, D, J, and C genes. The ferret locus appears to be most similar to that of the dog. Like other mammalian TRB loci, the ferret TRB locus contains a library of variable genes located upstream of two D-J-C gene clusters, followed by a (in the ferret non-functional) V gene with an inverted transcriptional orientation. All TRB genes (expressed or not) reported here have been approved by the IMGT/WHO-IUIS nomenclature committee. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00251-019-01142-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.