VDJ-Insights: simplifying the annotation of genomic IG and TCR regions

Accurate annotation of germline immunoglobulin (IG) and T cell receptor (TCR) loci is critical for understanding adaptive immunity. VDJ-Insights provides a user-friendly software package for characterizing these complex immune regions. In addition, it assesses gene segment functionality, identifies recombination signal sequences (RSS), and annotates complementary-determining regions 1 and 2 (CDR1, CDR2). VDJ-Insights achieved over 99% concordance with curated annotations from multiple species, outperforming existing annotation tools. When applied to 95 haplotypes from the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium, VDJ-Insights identified 652 and 275 novel IG and TCR alleles, respectively, highlighting its scalability for large immunogenetic studies.