Sequencing of Polyclonal Antibodies by Integrating Intact Mass, Middle–Down, and De Novo Bottom–Up Mass Spectrometry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Polyclonal antibodies (pAbs) represent nature's approach to robust immunity, targeting multiple sites on pathogens, but their complex mixtures have remained largely unsequenceable, limiting their therapeutic potential. While monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) dominate therapeutics because of their reproducibility, pAbs offer superior resilience against viral mutations and broader target recognition. Current pAb sequencing attempts have shown limitations, requiring germline databases or B-cell sequencing. Due to the highly variable nature of antibodies, as well as the possibility of unavailable B cells, there is a need for a purely mass spectrometry- and de novo sequencing-based solution. Here, we present PolySeq.AI, an automated de novo workflow that combines bottom-up, middle-down, and intact mass analysis, to accurately sequence pAb samples without relying on external databases. PolySeq.AI achieved >99% sequencing accuracy across all tested samples, including an mAb mixture from the HB-95 cell line and a mixture of four mAbs, with complete bottom-up coverage and strong middle-down fragment support. Importantly, recombinant antibodies produced from our de novo sequences of HB-95 antibodies retained full binding capabilities to human leukocyte antigen-I complexes, confirming the accuracy and efficacy of our pAb de novo sequencing workflow.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".