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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…
The adaptive immune system of vertebrates can detect, respond to, and memorize diverse pathogens from past experience. While the clonal selection of T helper (Th) cells is the simple and established mechanism to better recognize new…
Cells process external and internal signals through chemical interactions. Cells that constitute the immune system (e.g., antigen presenting cell, T-cell, B-cell, mast cell) can have different functions (e.g., adaptive memory, inflammatory…
Effective recognition of foreign antigens by the adaptive immune system relies on T cells being activated by antigen-presenting cells (APCs) in lymph nodes. Here, diffusing T cells may encounter cognate APCs that present matching antigen…
How does immune system evolve functional proteins - potent antibodies - in such a short time? We address this question using a microscopic, protein-level, sequence-based model of humoral immune response with explicitly defined interactions…
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…
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…
Some cells have to take decision based on the quality of surroundings ligands, almost irrespective of their quantity, a problem we name "absolute discrimination". An example of absolute discrimination is recognition of not-self by immune T…
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…
T cells orchestrate adaptive immune responses upon activation. T cell activation requires sufficiently strong binding of T cell receptors on their surface to short peptides derived from foreign proteins bound to protein products of the…
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…
The strategic induction of cell death serves as a crucial immune defense mechanism for the eradication of pathogenic infections within host cells. Investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying immunogenic cell pathways has significantly…
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…
Many events in the vertebrate immune system are influenced by some element of chance. The objective of the present work is to describe affinity maturation of B lymphocytes (in which random events are perhaps the most characteristic), and to…
Affinity maturation produces antibodies that bind antigens with high specificity by accumulating mutations in the antibody sequence. Mapping out the antibody-antigen affinity landscape can give us insight into the accessible paths during…
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…
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…
In response to pathogens, the adaptive immune system generates specific antibodies that bind and neutralize foreign antigens. Understanding the composition of an individual's immune repertoire can provide insights into this process and…
In this work we adopt a statistical mechanics approach to investigate basic, systemic features exhibited by adaptive immune systems. The lymphocyte network made by B-cells and T-cells is modeled by a bipartite spin-glass, where, following…
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…