CLONALITY

Clonality explains the function of immune cell response(lymphocytes) specific to a particular antigen. It is a widespread approach for studying antibody formation toward immune response. Leukemia & lymphomas originate from lymphoid cells due to malignant transformation and are cell-specific or ‘clonal’ antigen receptor gene rearrangements. There are different types of clonality like monoclonal (from one clone), oligoclonal (from a few clones) and polyclonal (derived from many clones). These are used for testing antibiotics or in immunology.

What is Clonality Testing?

Clonal testing is the detection of antibiotics or immunoglobulin and T-cell receptor gene rearrangements with the help of different approaches like PCR assays, Southern blotting analyses, next-generation sequencing analysis etc. In-vitro assays also detect clonal rearrangement which ultimately helps to treat malignancies.

Various applications of clonality testing are-

• identification of clonal B-cell and T-cell malignancies.
• identification of gene rearrangements in hematologic samples.
• Identifying clonal rearrangements of the immunoglobulin heavy chain (IGH) gene in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) and small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL).

So, there are various other applications of clonality testing which help to detect them. And its requirement is going to increase in near future.