Related papers: Theoretical Aspects of Immunity
The adaptive immune system is a dynamical, self-organized multiscale system that protects vertebrates from both pathogens and internal irregularities, such as tumours. For these reason it fascinates physicists, yet the multitude of…
T cells are central to the adaptive immune response, capable of detecting pathogenic antigens while ignoring healthy tissues with remarkable specificity and sensitivity. Quantitatively understanding how T cell receptors (TCRs) discriminate…
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 biological immune system is a robust, complex, adaptive system that defends the body from foreign pathogens. It is able to categorize all cells (or molecules) within the body as self-cells or non-self cells. It does this with the help…
It is proposed that using both self-non-self and danger theories give a better understanding of how the immune system works. It is proposed that comparing immune system to police force is useful in this case since police responds both to…
We model the immune surveillance of a pathogen which passes through $n$ immunologically distinct stages. The biological parameters of this system induce a partial order on the stages, and this, in turn, determines which stages will be…
The adaptive immune system is a natural diagnostic and therapeutic. It recognizes threats earlier than clinical symptoms manifest and neutralizes antigen with exquisite specificity. Recognition specificity and broad reactivity is enabled…
The biological immune system is a robust, complex, adaptive system that defends the body from foreign pathogens. It is able to categorize all cells (or molecules) within the body as self-cells or non-self cells. It does this with the help…
The biological immune system is a robust, complex, adaptive system that defends the body from foreign pathogens. It is able to categorize all cells (or molecules) within the body as self or non-self substances. It does this with the help of…
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…
Pathogens drive changes in host immune systems that in turn exert pressure for pathogens to evolve. Quantifying and understanding this constant coevolutionary process has clear practical global health implications. Yet its relatively easier…
We argue that immune system is an adaptive complex system. It is shown that it has emergent properties. Its network structure is of the small world network type. The network is of the threshold type, which helps in avoiding autoimmunity. It…
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 immune system can be thought as a complex network of different interacting elements. A cellular automaton, defined in shape-space, was recently shown to exhibit self-regulation and complex behavior and is, therefore, a good candidate to…
Simple ideas, endowed from the mathematical theory of control, are used in order to analyze in general grounds the human immune system. The general principles are minimization of the pathogen load and economy of resources. They should…
Innate immunity now occupies a central role in immunology. However, artificial immune system models have largely been inspired by adaptive not innate immunity. This paper reviews the biological principles and properties of innate immunity…
The phenomenon of immunological memory has been known for a long time. But, the underlying mechanism is poorly understood. According to the theory of clonal selection the response to a specific invading antigen (e.g., bacteria) is offered…
We study a dynamical system model of an idiotypic immune network with a small number of degrees of freedom, mainly focusing on the effect of a threshold above which antibodies can recognise antibodies. The response of the system to…
Organisms have evolved immune systems that can counter pathogenic threats. The adaptive immune system in vertebrates consists of a diverse repertoire of immune receptors that can dynamically reorganize to specifically target the…
An interesting inference drawn by some Covid-19 epidemiological models is that there exists a proportion of the population who are not susceptible to infection -- even at the start of the current pandemic. This paper introduces a model of…