Artificial intelligence predicts the immunogenic landscape of SARS-CoV-2 leading to universal blueprints for vaccine designs.

The global population is at present suffering from a pandemic of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the novel coronavirus Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The goal of this study was to use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict blueprints for designing universal vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, that contain a sufficiently broad repertoire of T-cell epitopes capable of providing coverage and protection across the global population. To help achieve these aims, we profiled the entire SARS-CoV-2 proteome across the most frequent 100 HLA-A, HLA-B and HLA-DR alleles in the human population, using host-infected cell surface antigen presentation and immunogenicity predictors from the NEC Immune Profiler suite of tools, and generated comprehensive epitope maps.

NK cell responses to cytomegalovirus infection lead to stable imprints in the human KIR repertoire and involve activating KIRs.

Human natural killer (NK) cells are functionally regulated by killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) and their interactions with HLA class I molecules. As KIR expression in a given NK cell is genetically hard-wired, we hypothesized that KIR repertoire perturbations reflect expansions of unique NK-cell subsets and may be used to trace adaptation of the NK-cell compartment to virus infections. By determining the human "KIR-ome" at a single-cell level in more than 200 donors, we were able to analyze the magnitude of NK cell adaptation to virus infections in healthy individuals.

Tolerant and diverse natural killer cell repertoires in the absence of selection.

Natural killer (NK) cells are innate lymphocytes that participate in the early control of viruses and tumors. The function of NK cells is under tight regulation by two complementary inhibitory receptor families that bind to classical and non-classical HLA class I molecules: the CD94/NKG2A receptors and the killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs). In this mini-review, recent data on the structure of human NK cell receptor repertoires and its relation to functional responses and tolerance to self are discussed.

KIR acquisition probabilities are independent of self-HLA class I ligands and increase with cellular KIR expression.

Inhibitory killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) preserve tolerance to self and shape the functional response of human natural killer (NK) cells. Here, we have evaluated the influence of selection processes in the formation of inhibitory KIR repertoires in a cohort of 44 donors homozygous for the group A KIR haplotype. Coexpression of multiple KIRs was more frequent than expected by the product rule that describes random association of independent events.