BiGCN Learns B Cell Functional States by Integrating Single‐Cell Transcriptomes and BCR Repertoires

B lymphocytes are pivotal players in immune regulation and disease progression, yet their full functional diversity has remained elusive due to the siloed analysis of single-cell transcriptomes and B cell receptor (BCR) repertoires. Here, we present BiGCN, a novel method that explicitly integrates transcriptomic and BCR data at single-cell resolution. By uniting these two modalities within a unified embedding using a graph convolutional network (GCN) framework, BiGCN enables high-fidelity characterization of B cell states and clonal relationships. Applying BiGCN across a wide spectrum of paired single - cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and single -cell BCR sequencing (scBCR-seq) datasets, including infectious disease, autoimmunity, and a comprehensive pan-cancer atlas, we demonstrate that BiGCN markedly outperforms existing approaches in information integration, functional annotation, and biological insight. BiGCN not only recapitulates the trajectory from B cell maturation to immunoglobulin class switching but also discovers intermediate B cell subtypes and reveals functional states that are otherwise obscured by conventional analyses. Our results establish BiGCN as a versatile and robust platform for B cells research, accelerating discoveries in immunology, cancer biology, and systems medicine.

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Publication Details

Journal
Small Methods
Published
2026-02-22
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/smtd.202501919
Primary Topic
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

BiGCN Learns B Cell Functional States by Integrating Single‐Cell Transcriptomes and BCR Repertoires

X. Liu, Jiwei Huang, Dongxi Xiang, Grant Wei et al.
Small Methods
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
article

BiGCN Learns B Cell Functional States by Integrating Single‐Cell Transcriptomes and BCR Repertoires

X. Liu, Jiwei Huang, Dongxi Xiang, Grant Wei, Ying Liu, Shuang Wang, Shasha Zhao
article en

Abstract

B lymphocytes are pivotal players in immune regulation and disease progression, yet their full functional diversity has remained elusive due to the siloed analysis of single-cell transcriptomes and B cell receptor (BCR) repertoires. Here, we present BiGCN, a novel method that explicitly integrates transcriptomic and BCR data at single-cell resolution. By uniting these two modalities within a unified embedding using a graph convolutional network (GCN) framework, BiGCN enables high-fidelity characterization of B cell states and clonal relationships. Applying BiGCN across a wide spectrum of paired single - cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and single -cell BCR sequencing (scBCR-seq) datasets, including infectious disease, autoimmunity, and a comprehensive pan-cancer atlas, we demonstrate that BiGCN markedly outperforms existing approaches in information integration, functional annotation, and biological insight. BiGCN not only recapitulates the trajectory from B cell maturation to immunoglobulin class switching but also discovers intermediate B cell subtypes and reveals functional states that are otherwise obscured by conventional analyses. Our results establish BiGCN as a versatile and robust platform for B cells research, accelerating discoveries in immunology, cancer biology, and systems medicine.

Small MethodsVol. 10(5)
Shanghai Jiao Tong University (CN), Renji Hospital (CN), Jiading District Central Hospital (CN), Shanghai Cancer Institute (CN), Institute for Biomedicine (IT), Hangzhou Dianzi University (CN)
Openalex Percentile: Top 45%
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
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