Blood single cell immune profiling reveals the interferon-MAPK pathway mediated adaptive immune response for COVID-19

Lulin Huang; Yi Shi; Bo Gong; Li Jiang; Xiaoqi Liu; Jialiang Yang; Juan Tang; Chunfang You; Qi Jiang; Bo Long; Tao Zeng; Mei Luo; Fanwei Zeng; Fanxin Zeng; Shuqiang Wang; Xingxiang Yang; Zhenglin Yang

The human adaptive immune system plays a critical role in defending against viral infections. Many immune cells (such as leukocytes) and immune molecules (such as specific plasma proteins) are intrinsic components of blood. Therefore, the functions of blood and the immune system are inseparable. T cells and B cells are important in the pathogenesis of many-perhaps all-immune-mediated diseases (14) (15) (16) (17) . A T cell receptor (TCR) mediates recognition of pathogen-associated epitopes through interactions with peptide and major histocompatibility complexes (pMHCs). TCRs and B cell receptors (BCRs) are generated by genomic rearrangement at the germline level, a process termed V(D)J recombination, which has the ability to generate marked diversity among TCRs and BCRs. Parameterizing the elements of antigenspecific immune repertoires across a diverse set of epitopes may generate powerful applications in a variety of research fields for the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases. Here, we focus on insights into blood immune responses to COVID-19 using 5' mRNA, TCR, and BCR V(D)J recombination analysis with 4 4 single-cell resolution.