Related papers: Affinity maturation for an optimal balance between…
One strategy for winning a coevolutionary struggle is to evolve rapidly. Most of the literature on host-pathogen coevolution focuses on this phenomenon, and looks for consequent evidence of coevolutionary arms races. An alternative…
The adaptive immune system responds to pathogens by selecting clones of cells with specific receptors. While clonal selection in response to particular antigens has been studied in detail, it is unknown how a lifetime of exposures to many…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
The adaptive and innate branches of the vertebrate immune system work in close collaboration to protect organisms from harmful pathogens. As an organism ages its immune system undergoes immunosenescence, characterized by declined…
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…
Antibodies are widely used as therapeutics, but their development requires costly affinity maturation, involving iterative mutations to enhance binding affinity.This paper explores a sequence-only scenario for affinity maturation, using…
Adaptive therapy (AT) is designed to postpone the emergence of drug resistance by exploiting evolutionary competition among tumor subclones. Most mathematical models of AT assume a binary population structure of drug-sensitive and…
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…
Keeping a memory of evolving stimuli is ubiquitous in biology, an example of which is immune memory for evolving pathogens. However, learning and memory storage for dynamic patterns still pose challenges in machine learning. Here, we…
Pattern-diluted associative networks were introduced recently as models for the immune system, with nodes representing T-lymphocytes and stored patterns representing signalling protocols between T- and B-lymphocytes. It was shown earlier…
The adaptive immune system's T and B cells can be viewed as large populations of simple, diverse classifiers. Artificial immune systems (AIS) $\unicode{x2013}$ algorithmic models of T or B cell repertoires $\unicode{x2013}$ are used in both…
Recent advances in diffusion models have shown remarkable potential for antibody design, yet existing approaches apply uniform generation strategies that cannot adapt to each antigen's unique requirements. Inspired by B cell affinity…
During chronic infection, HIV-1 engages in a rapid coevolutionary arms race with the host's adaptive immune system. While it is clear that HIV exerts strong selection on the adaptive immune system, the characteristics of the somatic…
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…
To ensure faithful information transmission, cells utilize nonequilibrium drives to reduce errors. Kinetic proofreading is a classic mechanism known to sharpen ligand discrimination by T lymphocytes. It remains an open question whether the…