Related papers: Understanding Memory B Cell Selection
Our adaptive immune system relies on the persistence over long times of a diverse set of antigen-experienced B cells to encode our memories of past infections and to protect us against future ones. While longitudinal repertoire sequencing…
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…
We study the maturation of the antibody population following primary antigen presentation as a global optimization problem. Emphasis is placed on the trade-off between the safety of mutations that lead to local improvements to the…
We present a model that considers the maturation of the antibody population following primary antigen presentation as a global optimization problem. The trade-off that emerges from our model describes the balance between the safety of…
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…
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…
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…
Lymphocyte selection is a fundamental operation of adaptive immunity. In order to produce B-lymphocytes with a desired antigenic profile, a process of mutation-selection occurs in the germinal center, which is part of the lymph nodes. We…
A hallmark of the adaptive immune response is the proliferation of pathogen-specific lymphocytes that leave in their wake a long lived population of cells that provide lasting immunity. A subject of ongoing investigation is when during an…
We discuss the origin of two classes of germinal centers that have been observed during humoral immune responses: Some germinal centers develop very well and give rise to a large number of high affinity antibody producing plasma cells.…
Affinity Maturation (AM) is the process through which the immune system is able to develop potent antibodies against new pathogens it encounters, and is at the base of the efficacy of vaccines. At its core AM is analogous to a Darwinian…
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…
Immune cells learn about their antigenic targets using tactile sense: during recognition, a highly organized yet dynamic motif, named immunological synapse, forms between immune cells and antigen-presenting cells (APCs). Via synapses,…
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")…
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…
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…
We are interested in modeling theoretical immunology within a statistical mechanics flavor: focusing on the antigen-independent maturation process of B-cells, in this paper we try to revise the problem of self vs non-self discrimination by…
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…
Cells are known to exert forces to sense their physical surroundings for guidance of motion and fate decisions. Here, we propose that cells might do mechanical work to drive their own evolution, taking inspiration from the adaptive immune…