Related papers: Formation of BCR Oligomers Provides a Mechanism fo…
B cells receptor (BCR) signaling in response to membrane-bound antigen increases with antigen affinity, a process known as affinity discrimination. We use computational modeling to show that B cell affinity discrimination requires that…
B cells signaling in response to antigen is proportional to antigen affinity, a process known as affinity discrimination. Recent research suggests that B cells can acquire antigen in membrane-bound form on the surface of antigen-presenting…
The clustering of B cell receptor (BCR) molecules and the formation of the protein segregation structure known as the immunological synapse appears to precede antigen (Ag) uptake by B cells. The mature B cell synapse is characterized by a…
We are frequently faced with a large collection of antibodies, and want to select those with highest affinity for their cognate antigen. When developing a first-line therapeutic for a novel pathogen, for instance, we might look for such…
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…
B cells and the antibodies they produce are vital to health and survival, motivating research on the details of the mutational and evolutionary processes in the germinal centers (GC) from which mature B cells arise. It is known that B cells…
Affinity maturation of antibodies during immune responses is achieved by multiple rounds of somatic hypermutation and subsequent preferential selection of those B cells that express B cell receptors with improved binding characteristics for…
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.…
One of the key phenomena in the adaptive immune response to infection and immunization is affinity maturation, during which antibody genes are mutated and selected, typically resulting in a substantial increase in binding affinity to the…
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…
B cells develop high affinity receptors during the course of affinity maturation, a cyclic process of mutation and selection. At the end of affinity maturation, a number of cells sharing the same ancestor (i.e. in the same "clonal family")…
We introduce a novel, multi-scale model for affinity maturation, which aims to capture the intra-clonal, inter-clonal and epitope-specific organization of the B cell population in a germinal center. We describe the evolution of the B cell…
B cell receptors (BCRs) play a crucial role in recognizing and fighting foreign antigens. High-throughput sequencing enables in-depth sampling of the BCRs repertoire after immunization. However, only a minor fraction of BCRs actively…
The affinity of antibodies (Abs) produced in vivo for their target antigens (Ags) is typically well below the maximum affinity possible. Nearly 25 years ago, Foote and Eisen explained how an 'affinity ceiling' could arise from constraints…
The human immune system depends on a highly diverse collection of antibody-making B cells. B cell receptor sequence diversity is generated by a random recombination process called "rearrangement" forming progenitor B cells, then a Darwinian…
Intracellular signaling often arises from ligand-induced oligomerization of cell surface receptors. This oligomerization or clustering process is fundamentally a cooperative behavior between near-neighbor receptor molecules; the properties…
Recent experiments with amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptide suggest that formation of toxic oligomers may be an important contribution to the onset of Alzheimer's disease. The toxicity of Abeta oligomers depends on their structure, which is…
Contradictory results have been reported on the time evolution of the alignment between clusters and their Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). We study this topic by analyzing cosmological hydro-simulations of 24 massive clusters with…
A defocusing imaging technique has been used as a diagnostic to identify binary agglomerates (dimers) in complex plasmas. Quasi-two-dimensional plasma crystal consisting of monodisperse spheres and binary agglomerates has been created where…
We analyse a minimal model for the primary response in the adaptive immune system comprising three different players: antigens, T and B cells. We assume B-T interactions to be diluted and sampled locally from heterogeneous degree…