Multimodal computational framework identifies B cell convergence in autoimmunity and ageing

Abstract

Identification of the origin of pathogenic immune cells is crucial for therapeutic interventions and diagnosis but pseudotime methods struggle to trace immune cells accurately. Current trajectory inference methods for B cell development and response in health and disease either ignore or underutilize antigen receptor sequence information, limiting their ability to resolve developmental pathways, particularly for pathogenic populations. Widely used methods such as Monocle 3 reconstruct developmental paths from transcriptomic similarity alone, discarding the features from immune receptors. Dandelion has combined the immune receptor features with transcriptomics but it struggles to simulate the trajectory path of B cells. Here we present ClonoTrace, a computational framework that integrates BCR sequence features with transcriptomic trajectory inference through gated fusion of multimodal embeddings. In fetal B cell development and germinal centre development, ClonoTrace achieves higher trajectory inference accuracy than Monocle 3 and Dandelion. Applied to systemic lupus erythematosus, ClonoTrace identifies memory B cell extrafollicular maturation pathway in addition to naive B cell, accompanied by induction of ZEB2 with a concomitant decline of BACH2 along the trajectory, as the alternative origin of pathogenic double negative 2 B cells (DN2) in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients. In healthy ageing, ClonoTrace identified three pathways from naive, IgM+ memory B cells and switched-memory B cells mature through a DN2-associated transcriptional state that precedes age-associated B cells. ClonoTraces fate probability algorithm indicated that IgM+memory B cell to ABC transition emerged as the leading candidate age-associated transition, that is a process distinct from SLE DN2 maturation. ClonoTrace provides a generalizable framework for receptor-informed trajectory inference, revealing the developmental pathways of pathogenic B cell populations that are untraceable to single modality approaches in autoimmunity and aging.