Related papers: First passage times to T cell activation
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…
T cells monitor the health status of cells by identifying foreign peptides displayed on their surface. T-cell receptors (TCRs), which are protein complexes found on the surface of T cells, are able to bind to these peptides. This process is…
The adaptive immune system responds to foreign invaders by activating T cells. However, this response is perilous if T cells are activated by the wrong signal or if they remain activated unduly long after the threat has been eliminated. It…
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…
T cells form intriguing patterns during adhesion to antigen-presenting cells. The patterns at the cell-cell contact zone are composed of two types of domains, which either contain short TCR/MHCp receptor-ligand complexes or the longer…
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…
In noisy environments such as the cell, many processes involve target sites that are often hidden or inactive, and thus not always available for reaction with diffusing entities. To understand reaction kinetics in these situations, we study…
Cell migration is a fundamental process involved in physiological phenomena such as the immune response and morphogenesis, but also in pathological processes, such as the development of tumor metastasis. These functions are effectively…
In the human immune system, T-helper cells are able to differentiate into two lymphocyte subsets: Th1 and Th2. The intracellular signaling pathways of differentiation form a dynamic regulation network by secreting distinctive types of…
For two molecules to react they first have to meet. Yet, reaction times are rarely on par with the first-passage times that govern such molecular encounters. A prime reason for this discrepancy is stochastic transitions between reactive and…
Aging, the dependence of the dynamics of a physical process on the time $t_a$ since its original preparation, is observed in systems ranging from the motion of charge carriers in amorphous semiconductors over the blinking dynamics of…
The T helper (Th) phenotypes, Th1/Th2, are acquired upon interaction of a naive T helper cell and an antigen presenting cell (APC). Naive T helper cells may differentiate into either phenotype, and the actual outcome is determined by the…
The T cell arm of the adaptive immune system provides the host protection against unknown pathogens by discriminating between host and foreign material. This discriminatory capability is achieved by the creation of a repertoire of cells…
The immune response to an acute primary infection is a coupled process of antigen proliferation, molecular recognition by naive B cells, and their subsequent proliferation and antibody shedding. This process contains a fundamental problem:…
Whether a sub-optimum lymphocyte stimulus is achieved by lowering ligand concentration, or decreasing its affinity, initial TCR activation responses are likely to be digital. We now know for cultured peripheral blood mononuclear cells…
Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (T cells) and natural killer cells form a tight contact, the immunological synapse (IS), with target cells, where they release their lytic granules containing perforin/granzyme and cytokine containing vesicles.…
T-cells play a key role in adaptive immunity by mounting specific responses against diverse pathogens. An effective binding between T-cell receptors (TCRs) and pathogen-derived peptides presented on Major Histocompatibility Complexes (MHCs)…
T-cells are a crucial subset of white blood cells that play a central role in the immune system. When T-cells bind antigens, it leads to cell activation and the induction of an immune response. If T-cells are activated by antigens in vivo…
The similarity between neural and immune networks has been known for decades, but so far we did not understand the mechanism that allows the immune system, unlike associative neural networks, to recall and execute a large number of…
Finding representative reaction pathways is necessary for understanding mechanisms of molecular processes, but is considered to be extremely challenging. We propose a new method to construct reaction paths based on mean first-passage times.…