Output from the Merge Immune Repertoire tool
Merge Immune Repertoire produces a TCR clonotypes () or BCR clonotypes () element, containing the merged clonotypes.
The tool optionally outputs a report () containing a summary of the performed merging, followed by statistics of the merged clonotypes, see Output from the Immune Repertoire Analysis for details.
The merging summary shows how many clonotypes were merged and the reason for merging:
- Similar CDR3. Clonotypes were merged according to Merge clonotypes with similar CDR3.
- Without C segment. Clonotypes were merged according to Merge clonotypes without C segment.
- Similar CDR3 and without C segment. Clonotypes were merged according to both Merge clonotypes with similar CDR3 and Merge clonotypes without C segment.
- Identical. Clonotypes had the same identified segments and the same CDR3 nucleotide sequence.
The Immune Repertoire Analysis tool (Immune Repertoire Analysis) reports such clonotypes as only one clonotype. However, multiple but identical clonotypes can possibly be present in imported clonotypes (see Import/Export VDJtools Clonotypes). Identical clonotypes are always merged by the tool, regardless of the chosen options.
- Identical due to preceding merging. Two originally different clonotypes became identical due to preceding merging steps. See Merging of clonotypes for details.
- Multiple merge events. The same clonotype might be merged into several clonotypes for different reasons. For example, if a clonotype is merged into two different clonotypes because of similar CDR3, this clonotype will count towards Similar CDR3. If another clonotype is merged into two different clonotypes, one because of similar CDR3 and the other because of missing C, this clonotype will count towards both Similar CDR3, Without C segment and Multiple merge events.