vdjmatch — TCR peptide–MHC annotation

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vdjmatch annotates selected T-cell receptors and repertoires against VDJdb, preserving query identities and reporting peptide–MHC candidates, competing evidence and optional background calibration. Native sequence search uses seqtree; repertoire ingestion reuses published vdjtools readers. Dependency versions and native CPU budgets are managed by the installed package.

Quick start

python -m pip install vdjmatch
vdjmatch annotate sample.tsv -o annotation

Use AIRR junction_aa (including conserved anchors) and V calls. The curated VDJdb reference is fetched on first use; add --vdjdb reference.zip for offline input. Single TRA/TRB receptors and paired receptors are supported. Exact hits are retained by default. Scores describe sequence evidence, not proof of binding.

For a small offline example, download the examples directory and run sh examples/annotate.sh annotation-demo from the repository root.

Choose a reference

The existing match command and Annotator API support three reference choices:

--vdjdb remains an alias for --reference. Ordinary queries retain exact matches. Use --exclude-exact only when explicitly evaluating a classifier or assessing record reliability; it filters hits while retaining the complete reference model.

A simple single-chain reference needs junction_aa,label (or epitope instead of label). Supply --locus TRA/TRB or a reference locus column. For paired tables, use junction_aa_alpha,junction_aa_beta,label and add --paired; each reference row links its actual TRA/TRB pair. V/J, species and MHC metadata are optional. Missing query locus fields use the explicit hint or the reference's sole locus; supplied query metadata is retained. The sequences include conserved junction anchors.

from vdjmatch import Annotator

single = Annotator.from_labels([("CASSQYF", "class-a"), ("CATSRYF", "class-b")], locus="TRB")
calls = single.annotate(["CASSQYF", "CWWWWWWWF"])

paired = Annotator.from_labels([("CAVQYF", "CASSQYF", "class-a")])

Labeled references are indexed directly without VDJdb-specific curation or reference-diagnostic preparation. Their labels are opaque class names, reported in the existing epitope output fields. They default to uncalibrated matching; request --evalue with the appropriate organism/controls for calibration. Run the synthetic single/paired example for a complete Python example.

Documentation

The legacy Java/Groovy implementation remains on legacy-java and Java tag 1.3.1, with JitPack artifact com.github.antigenomics:vdjmatch:1.3.1.

License

ISALGO LAB Academic and Non-Commercial Research License v1.0. See LICENSE.

CPU budgets use threads=0 for automatic parallel work, capped at 16 allocated CPUs. Use 1 for serial work or a positive count to override the automatic cap within the scheduler/container allocation. Sample workers keep their inner numerical kernels serial.

Candidate-only annotation coalesces up to 256 complete query identities and 64 MiB of queued expanded tables per reduction. Native search and alias expansion keep small blocks; larger complete-query frames are consumed directly.