Related papers: Evolution of Multispecificity in an Immune Network
Although species longevity is subject to a diverse range of selective forces, the mortality curves of a wide variety of organisms are rather similar. We argue that aging and its universal characteristics may have evolved by means of a…
We present a novel model that describes the within-host evolutionary dynamics of parasites undergoing antigenic variation. The approach uses a multi-type branching process with two types of entities defined according to their relationship…
Mathematical disease modelling has long operated under the assumption that any one infectious disease is caused by one transmissible pathogen spreading among a population. This paradigm has been useful in simplifying the biological reality…
Models of the consensus of the individual state in social systems have been the subject of recent researches in the physics literature. We investigate how network structures coevolve with the individual state under the framework of social…
We study the evolution of the network properties of a populated network embedded in a genotype space characterised by either a low or a high number of potential links, with particular emphasis on the connectivity and clustering. Evolution…
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) evolves with extraordinary rapidity. However, its evolution is constrained by interactions between mutations in its fitness landscape. Here we show that an Ising model describing these interactions,…
The concept of network immunity, i.e., the robustness of the network connectivity after a random deletion of edges or vertices, has been investigated in biological or communication networks. We apply this concept to a self-assembling,…
We consider the mutual interactions, via cytokine exchanges, among helper lymphocytes, B lymphocytes and killer lymphocytes, and we model them as a unique system by means of a tripartite network. Each part includes all the different clones…
We study how the interplay between the memory immune response and pathogen mutation affects epidemic dynamics in two related models. The first explicitly models pathogen mutation and individual memory immune responses, with contacted…
We study some simple mathematical models designed to test the following hypothesis: can a pathogen escape the immune system only because of its high probability of mutation? We propose both spatial and non-spatial models. In all of our…
We examine the properties of a recently proposed model for antigenic variation in malaria which incorporates multiple epitopes and both long-lasting and transient immune responses. We show that in the case of a vanishing decay rate for 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…
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…
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.…
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…
We develop a stochastic model to study the specific response of the immune system. The model is based on the dynamical interaction between Regulatory and Effector CD4+ T cells in the presence of Antigen Presenting Cells inside a lymphatic…
One important feature of the mammalian immune system is the highly specific binding of antigens to antibodies. Antibodies generated in response to one infection may also provide some level of cross immunity to other infections. One model to…
The evolution of the adaptive immune system is characterized by changes in the relative abundances of the B- and T-cell clones that make up its repertoires. To fully capture this evolution, we need to describe the complex dynamics of the…
We present a detailed analytical and numerical study for the spreading of infections in complex population networks with acquired immunity. We show that the large connectivity fluctuations usually found in these networks strengthen…
We introduce a model of protein evolution to explain limitations in the immune system response to vaccination and disease. The phenomenon of original antigenic sin, wherein vaccination creates memory sequences that can \emph{increase}…