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Errors in data interpretation from genetic variation of human analytes
Heather L. Howie, Meghan Delaney, Xiaohong Wang, Lay See Er, Linda Kapp, Jenna N. Lebedev, James C. Zimring
Heather L. Howie, Meghan Delaney, Xiaohong Wang, Lay See Er, Linda Kapp, Jenna N. Lebedev, James C. Zimring
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Research Article Genetics Immunology

Errors in data interpretation from genetic variation of human analytes

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Abstract

In recent years, the extent of our vulnerability to misinterpretation due to poorly characterized reagents has become an issue of great concern. Antibody reagents have been identified as a major source of error, contributing to the “reproducibility crisis.” In the current report, we define an additional dimension of the crisis; in particular, we define variation of the targets being analyzed. We report that natural variation in the immunoglobulin “constant” region alters the reactivity with commonly used subtype-specific anti-IgG reagents, resulting in cross-reactivity of polyclonal regents with inappropriate targets and blind spots of monoclonal reagents for desired targets. This raises the practical concern that numerous studies characterizing IgG subtypes in human disease may contain errors due to such previously unappreciated defects. These studies also focus attention on the broader concern that genetic variation may affect the performance of any laboratory or research test that uses antibodies for detection.

Authors

Heather L. Howie, Meghan Delaney, Xiaohong Wang, Lay See Er, Linda Kapp, Jenna N. Lebedev, James C. Zimring

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Figure 5

Reactivity of anti-IgG4 monoclonal and polyclonal reagents with the 29 IgG isoallotypes.

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Reactivity of anti-IgG4 monoclonal and polyclonal reagents with the 29 I...
(A) Human RBCs with a phenotype of K+k+ (blue histograms) or K–k+ (red histograms; negative control) were stained with PUMA1 (specific for K+k+ cells) of the indicated human IgG subclass (labeled columns) and with the human IgG-specific reagents (labeled rows). While only canonical isoallotypes are shown, all 29 isoallotypes were tested in a similar manner, and data are presented in Figure 1. (B) Titration of the Sanquin anti-IgG4 polyclonal reagent with staining of canonical IgG4-01, as well as cross-reactive isoallotypes IgG3-03 and IgG3-13. (C) Cross-reactivity of IgG3-03 and IgG3-13 with polyclonal anti-IgG4 reagents is eliminated by mutating glutamic acid at amino acid position 419 in the CH3 region to glutamine. Binding of the pan-IgG detection reagent Ortho-AHG is shown for each variant to indicate that loss of staining is not due to loss of antibody expression. (D) Adsorption of cross-reactive antibodies using IgG3-03 and IgG3-13 backbones fused to a variable domain that binds an epitope (HLA) not expressed on RBCs results in elimination of cross-reactive detection while maintaining binding to canonical IgG4-01. Data shown are MFIs representative of 3 replicate experiments; stain indices are shown (upper right corner) for each histogram as an indicator of staining intensity above background (see Methods). S.Bio, Southern Biotech; BindSite, The Binding Site Group; Ortho, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics (see Methods for antibody details)

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