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Diversity in immunogenomics: the value and the challenge

Nature Methods volume 18, pages 588–591 (2021)Cite this article

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Immunogenomics studies have been largely limited to individuals of European ancestry, restricting the ability to identify variation in human adaptive immune responses across populations. Inclusion of a greater diversity of individuals in immunogenomics studies will substantially enhance our understanding of human immunology.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Nicky Mulder for comments that greatly improved the manuscript. Y.S. was supported by the National Science Foundation EAGER award (no. 2032783). M.S. is supported by Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation grant no. 075-15-2020-807. A.B.P. and C.D.B. are supported by an award from the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health (U41HG009649). C.T.W. and O.L.R. are supported in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers R24AI138963 and R21AI142590. V.G. is supported by a UiO World-Leading Research Community grant, the UiO:LifeScience Convergence Environment Immunolingo, EU Horizon 2020 iReceptorplus (no. 825821) and a Research Council of Norway FRIPRO project (#300740). V.D.J. was supported by an award from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (K12CA001727). The laboratory of L.Q.-M. is supported by the Institut Pasteur, the Collège de France, the CNRS, the Fondation Allianz-Institut de France and the French Government’s Investissement d’Avenir program, Laboratoires d’Excellence ‘Integrative Biology of Emerging Infectious Diseases’ (ANR-10- LABX-62-IBEID) and ‘Milieu Intérieur’ (ANR-10-LABX-69-01). R.A.A. is supported by the Fogarty International Center of the National Institute of Health under award number D43TW010934. P.K. is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (OPP1113682), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) (1U19AI109662, U19AI057229, 5R01AI125197), Department of Defense (W81XWH1910235) and Catalyst and Transformational Awards from the Dr. Ralph & Marian Falk Medical Research Trust. C.S. is supported by NIAID of the National Institutes of Health under award number U01AI136677. G.K.H is supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council (award number 532 2017-00968). S.M. is partially supported by National Science Foundation grants 2041984.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Houda Alachkar, Cathrine Scheepers, Corey T. Watson, Gunilla B. Karlsson Hedestam, Serghei Mangul.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Kerui Peng, Amanda M. Burkhardt, Houda Alachkar & Serghei Mangul

  2. Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

    Yana Safonova

  3. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, KY, USA

    Yana Safonova, Oscar L. Rodriguez & Corey T. Watson

  4. Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    Mikhail Shugay

  5. Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Moscow, Russia

    Mikhail Shugay

  6. Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Alice B. Popejoy & Carlos Bustamante

  7. Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

    Felix Breden

  8. Science for Life Laboratory, Department of Women’s and Children Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Petter Brodin

  9. Pediatric Rheumatology, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden

    Petter Brodin

  10. Laboratory of Research on Infectious Vector-borne Diseases, Institut Louis Malardé, Papeete, French Polynesia

    Van-Mai Cao-Lormeau

  11. Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Martin M. Corcoran & Gunilla B. Karlsson Hedestam

  12. Translational Immunology Laboratory, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France

    Darragh Duffy

  13. Departamento de Tecnología Médica, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de Tarapacá, Arica, Chile

    Macarena Fuentes-Guajardo

  14. Centro de Genética y Biología Molecular, Universidad de San Martín de Porres, La Molina, Lima, Perú

    Ricardo Fujita

  15. Department of Immunology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Victor Greiff

  16. Departments of Computational and Quantitative Medicine and Hematology, Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope, Duarte, CA, USA

    Vanessa D. Jönsson

  17. Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, China

    Xiao Liu

  18. Human Evolutionary Genetics Unit, Institut Pasteur, UMR 2000, CNRS, Paris, France

    Lluis Quintana-Murci

  19. Department of Human Genomics and Evolution, Collège de France, Paris, France

    Lluis Quintana-Murci

  20. UCLA Immunogenetics Center, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Maura Rossetti

  21. Department of Pharmacology & Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Jianming Xie

  22. Faculty of Engineering, Bar Ilan Institute of Nanotechnologies and Advanced Materials, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Gur Yaari

  23. Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Wei Zhang

  24. Genomics Research Department, Saudi Human Genome Project, King Fahad Medical City and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Malak S. Abedalthagafi

  25. Department of Cell Biology and Genetics, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria

    Khalid O. Adekoya & Rahaman A. Ahmed

  26. Department of Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, Taipei Medical University, New Taipei City, Taiwan

    Wei-Chiao Chang

  27. Division of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Medical University-Shuang Ho Hospital, New Taipei City, Taiwan

    Wei-Chiao Chang

  28. Division of Immunology, Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine and Department of Pathology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Clive Gray

  29. Laboratory of Tissue Immunology, National Health Laboratory Services and Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa

    Clive Gray

  30. Cancer Precision Medicine Center, Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, Tokyo, Japan

    Yusuke Nakamura

  31. Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, Birkbeck College, London, UK

    William D. Lees

  32. Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection, School of Medicine, Stanford University, CA, USA

    Purvesh Khatri

  33. Center for Biomedical Research, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Purvesh Khatri

  34. Centre for HIV and STIs, National Institute for Communicable Diseases of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Cathrine Scheepers

  35. South African Medical Research Council Antibody Immunity Research Unit, School of Pathology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Cathrine Scheepers

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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Serghei Mangul.

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Competing interests

V.G. declares advisory board positions in aiNET GmbH and Enpicom B.V. P.K. is a co-founder of Inflammatix, Inc. He is also a consultant to Inflammatix, Inc., Vir Biotechnology, Cepheid, and Genentech. G.K.H and M.C. are founders of ImmuneDiscover Sweden AB.

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Peng, K., Safonova, Y., Shugay, M. et al. Diversity in immunogenomics: the value and the challenge. Nat Methods 18, 588–591 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-021-01169-5

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