Related papers: The weakest link bridging germinal center B cells …
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…
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.…
Advanced-Glycation-Endproducts (AGEs) are known to be a major cause of impaired tissue material properties. In collagen fibrils, the main building component of human tissue, these AGEs appear as fibrillar cross-links. When AGEs accumulate…
Flat density cores have been obtained for a limited number of clusters of galaxies by strong gravitational lensing. This paper explores the possibility that the degeneracy pressure of fermionic dark matter accounts for the flat top density…
Protein fibril accumulation at interfaces is an important step in many physiological processes and neurodegenerative diseases as well as in designing materials. Here we show, using $\beta$-lactoglobulin fibrils as a model, that semiflexible…
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…
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…
Biological cells are able to accurately sense chemicals with receptors at their surfaces, allowing cells to move towards sources of attractant and away from sources of repellent. The accuracy of sensing chemical concentration is ultimately…
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…
Protein-ligand binding is the process by which a small molecule (drug or inhibitor) attaches to a target protein. Binding affinity, which characterizes the strength of biomolecular interactions, is essential for tackling diverse challenges…
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…
A fundamental mistake in receptor theory has led to an enduring misunderstanding of how to estimate the affinity and efficacy of an agonist. These properties are inextricably linked and cannot be easily separated in any case where the…
Aptamers are single stranded DNA, RNA or peptide sequences having the ability to bind a variety of specific targets (proteins, molecules as well as ions). Therefore, aptamer production and selection for therapeutic and diagnostic…
Biofilms are antibiotic-resistant bacterial aggregates that grow on moist surfaces and can trigger hospital-acquired infections. They provide a classical example in biology where the dynamics of cellular communities may be observed and…
We study the problem of associating mobile terminals to base stations in a linear interference network, with the goal of maximizing the average rate achieved over both the uplink and downlink sessions. The cell association decision is made…
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…
Large-scale structure calculations show that modest overdensity filaments will connect clusters of galaxies and these filaments are reservoirs of baryons, mainly in gaseous form. To determine whether such filaments exist, we have examined…
Bistability is a major mechanism for cellular decision making and usually results from positive feedback in biochemical control systems. Here we show theoretically that bistability between unbound and bound states of adhesion clusters…
The adhesion zone of immune cells, the 'immunological synapse', exhibits characteristic domains of receptor-ligand complexes. The domain formation is likely caused by a length difference of the receptor-ligand complexes, and has been…
While actin bundles are used by living cells for structural fortification, the microscopic origin of the elasticity of bundled networks is not understood. Here, we show that above a critical concentration of the actin binding protein…