Compositions and Method for Measuring and Calibrating Amplification Bias in Multiplexed PCR Reactions

摘要

Compositions and methods are described for standardizing the DNA amplification efficiencies of a highly heterogeneous set of oligonucleotide primers as may typically be used to amplify a heterogeneous set of DNA templates that contains rearranged lymphoid cell DNA encoding T cell receptors (TCR) or immunoglobulins (IG). The presently disclosed embodiments are useful to overcome undesirable bias in the utilization of a subset of amplification primers, which leads to imprecision in multiplexed high throughput sequencing of amplification products to quantify unique TCR or Ig encoding genomes in a sample. Provided is a composition comprising a diverse plurality of template oligonucleotides in substantially equimolar amounts, for use as a calibration standard for amplification primer sets. Also provided are methods for identifying and correcting biased primer efficiency during amplification.

主权项

1. A composition for standardizing the amplification efficiency of an oligonucleotide primer set for amplifying rearranged nucleic acid sequences encoding one or more adaptive immune receptors in a biological obtained from lymphoid cells of a mammalian subject, each adaptive immune receptor comprising a variable region and a joining region, the composition comprising:
a plurality of synthetic template oligonucleotides, each synthetic template oligonucleotide having a known concentration prior to amplification and an oligonucleotide sequence of a general formula:
5′-U1-B1-V-B2-R-B3-J-B4-U2-3′  [I] wherein: (a) V is an oligonucleotide sequence comprising at least 20 and not more than 1000 contiguous nucleotides of an adaptive immune receptor variable (V) region encoding gene sequence, or the complement thereof, and each V comprising a unique V-region oligonucleotide sequence; (b) J is an oligonucleotide sequence comprising at least 15 and not more than 600 contiguous nucleotides of an adaptive immune receptor joining (J) region encoding gene sequence, or the complement thereof, and each J comprising a unique J-region oligonucleotide sequence; (c) U1 is either nothing or comprises an oligonucleotide sequence that is selected from (i) a first universal adaptor oligonucleotide sequence and (ii) a first sequencing platform-specific oligonucleotide sequence that is linked to and positioned 5′ to a first universal adaptor oligonucleotide sequence; (d) U2 is either nothing or comprises an oligonucleotide sequence that is selected from (i) a second universal adaptor oligonucleotide sequence, and (ii) a second sequencing platform-specific oligonucleotide sequence that is linked to and positioned 5′ to a second universal adaptor oligonucleotide sequence; (e) at least one of B1, B2, B3, and B4 is present and each of B1, B2, B3, and B4 comprises an oligonucleotide comprising a barcode sequence of 3-25 contiguous nucleotides, that uniquely identifies, as a paired combination, (i) the unique V-region oligonucleotide sequence of (a) and (ii) the unique J-region oligonucleotide sequence of (b); (f) R is either nothing or comprises a restriction enzyme recognition site that comprises an oligonucleotide sequence that is absent from (a)-(e), and wherein: (g) the plurality of synthetic template oligonucleotides comprises a number of at least a or at least b unique oligonucleotide sequences, whichever is larger, wherein a is the number of unique adaptive immune receptor V region-encoding gene segments in the subject and b is the number of unique adaptive immune receptor J region-encoding gene segments in the subject, and the composition comprises at least one synthetic template oligonucleotide for each unique V-region oligonucleotide sequence and at least one synthetic template oligonucleotide for each unique J-region oligonucleotide sequence.