Next-generation sequencing (NGS) allows the characterization of the adaptive immune receptor repertoire (AIRR) in exquisite detail. These large-scale AIRR-seq data sets have rapidly become critical to vaccine development, understanding the immune response in autoimmune and infectious disease, and monitoring novel therapeutics against cancer. Over the past five years, a grass roots, international community (the AIRR Community - www.airr-community.org) has been working towards establishing standards and recommendations for obtaining, analyzing, curating and comparing/sharing NGS AIRR-seq datasets. Using these standards, the AIRR Community Common Repository Working Group (CRWG) is working towards establishing an international network of AIRR-seq repositories whose data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR).
The iReceptor Data Integration Platform (gateway.ireceptor.org) provides an implementation of the AIRR Data Commons envisioned by the AIRR Community. The iReceptor Scientific Gateway links distributed (federated) AIRR-seq repositories, allowing sequence searches or repertoire metadata queries across multiple studies at multiple institutions, returning sets of sequences fulfilling specific criteria. The data standards developed by the AIRR Community are at the foundation of our ability to implement such a platform. In this paper we use iReceptor as a case study that considers the importance of standards for effective data sharing.
The short paper will discuss the process that the AIRR Community went through to establish its working groups and the standards those working groups produced. This will include discussions of the Minimal Information for AIRR-seq data (MiAIRR), the Standardized Representations for Annotated Immune Repertoires, and the emerging AIRR Data Commons Web API. Each of these standards will be discussed in the context of the iReceptor Platform terms of its importance to the platform's implementation as well as its expected usefulness to the scientific community.
