Related papers: Diversity against adversity: How adaptive immunity…
Mechanisms of immunity, and of the host-pathogen interactions in general are among the most fundamental problems of medicine, ecology, and evolution studies. Here, we present a microscopic, protein-level, sequence-based model of immune…
In order to target threatening pathogens, the adaptive immune system performs a continuous reorganization of its lymphocyte repertoire. Following an immune challenge, the B cell repertoire can evolve cells of increased specificity for the…
The immune system normally protects the human host against death by infection. However, when an immune response is mistakenly directed at self antigens, autoimmune disease can occur. We describe a model of protein evolution to simulate the…
Biological organisms have evolved a wide range of immune mechanisms to defend themselves against pathogens. Beyond molecular details, these mechanisms differ in how protection is acquired, processed and passed on to subsequent generations…
The mammalian adaptive immune system has evolved over millions of years to become an incredibly effective defense against foreign antigens. The adaptive immune system's humoral response creates plasma B cells and memory B cells, each with…
Adaptive humoral immunity, from the physical perspective, can be regarded as the self-organization of the binding energy landscape of antibodies. In biological terms, the humoral immune system evolves and adapts its repertoire of antigen…
The evolution of the adaptive immune system is characterized by changes in the relative abundances of the B- and T-cell clones that make up its repertoires. To fully capture this evolution, we need to describe the complex dynamics of the…
The physical interpretation of the functioning of the adaptive immune system, which has been thoroughly characterized on genetic and molecular levels, provides a unique opportunity to define an adaptive self-organizing biological system in…
Based on a recent model of evolving viruses competing with an adapting immune system [1], we study the conditions under which a viral quasispecies can maximize its growth rate. The range of mutation rates that allows viruses to thrive is…
The adaptive immune system relies on diversity of its repertoire of receptors to protect the organism from a great variety of pathogens. Since the initial repertoire is the result of random gene rearrangement, binding of receptors is not…
Immunological systems have been an abundant inspiration to contemporary computer scientists. Problem solving strategies, stemming from known immune system phenomena, have been successfully applied to challenging problems of modern computing…
Within the germinal center in follicles, B-cells proliferate, mutate and differentiate, while being submitted to a powerful selection~: a micro-evolutionary mechanism at the heart of adaptive immunity. A new foreign pathogen is confronted…
Understanding and modelling the complexity of the immune system is a challenge that is shared by the ImmunoComplexiT$^1$ thematic network from the RNSC. The immune system is a complex biological, adaptive, highly diversified, self-organized…
As pathogens spread in a population of hosts, immunity is built up and the pool of susceptible individuals is depleted. This generates selective pressure, to which many human RNA viruses, such as influenza virus or SARS-CoV-2, respond with…
Somatic hypermutations of immunoglobulin (Ig) genes occuring during affinity maturation drive B-cell receptors' ability to evolve strong binding to their antigenic targets. The landscape of these mutations is highly heterogeneous, with…
The vertebrate adaptive immune system provides a flexible and diverse set of molecules to neutralize pathogens. Yet, viruses such as HIV can cause chronic infections by evolving as quickly as the adaptive immune system, forming an…
When our immune system encounters foreign antigens (i.e., from pathogens), the B cells that produce our antibodies undergo a cyclic process of proliferation, mutation, and selection, improving their ability to bind to the specific antigen.…
The adaptive immune system provides a diverse set of molecules that can mount specific responses against a multitude of pathogens. Memory is a key feature of adaptive immunity, which allows organisms to respond more readily upon…
A central feature of vertebrate immune response is affinity maturation, wherein antibody-producing B cells undergo evolutionary selection in microanatomical structures called germinal centers, which form in secondary lymphoid organs upon…
We analyze the interactions between division, mutation and selection in a simplified evolutionary model, assuming that the population observed can be classified into fitness levels. The construction of our mathematical framework is…