Gut bacteria and immune profile don't line up the way we assumed, a Cell Reports study using ImmuneWatch DETECT

Do gut bacteria shape the immune system, or do the two simply run in parallel? A new Cell Reports study from the University of Antwerp set out to answer that across 394 individuals, integrating gut microbiome profiles, blood immune cell composition, whole blood transcriptomics and T cell receptor repertoires.

Contrary to the prevailing assumption, the researchers found that immune profile (immunotype) and gut microbiome profile (enterotype) don't line up. Directly compared, the two clustering patterns showed no significant agreement. The blood transcriptome turned out to be the only layer bridging the two.

Within the TCR analysis, ImmuneWatch DETECT was used to predict epitope specificity for individual T cell clonotypes. This confirmed that a subset of patient clusters segregated by SARS-CoV-2-specific reactivity, and surfaced additional signal, including a cluster whose only significant epitope specificity was Dengue, in a cluster that exact-match annotation alone could not explain.