Related papers: Complexity in the Immune System
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…
The decision of whether or not to vaccinate is a complex one. It involves the contribution both to a social good -- herd immunity -- and to one's own well being. It is informed by social influence, personal experience, education, and mass…
We live within an increasingly technological, information-laden environment for the first time in human evolution.This subjects us, and will continue to subject us in an accelerating fashion, to an unremitting exposure to meaningful…
Even when concepts similar to emergence have been used since antiquity, we lack an agreed definition. However, emergence has been identified as one of the main features of complex systems. Most would agree on the statement ``life is…
The mammalian adaptive immune system has evolved over millions of years to become an incredibly effective defense against foreign antigens. The adaptive immune system's humoral response creates plasma B cells and memory B cells, each with…
Competition within the immune system may degrade immune control of viral infections. We formalize the evolution that occurs in both HIV-1 and the immune system quasispecies. Inclusion of competition in the immune system leads to a novel…
Complex networks such as the sexual partnership web or the Internet often show a high degree of redundancy and heterogeneity in their connectivity properties. This peculiar connectivity provides an ideal environment for the spreading of…
The physical interpretation of the functioning of the adaptive immune system, which has been thoroughly characterized on genetic and molecular levels, provides a unique opportunity to define an adaptive self-organizing biological system in…
Classical population genetics a priori assigns fitness to alleles without considering molecular or functional properties of proteins that these alleles encode. Here we study population dynamics in a model where fitness can be inferred from…
An accurate estimation of the Protein Space size, in light of the factors that govern it, is a long-standing problem and of paramount importance in evolutionary biology, since it determines the nature of protein evolvability. A simple…
Proteins are intricate molecular machines whose complexity arises from the heterogeneity of the amino acid building blocks and their dynamic network of many-body interactions. These nanomachines gain function when put in the context of a…
The adaptive immune system provides a diverse set of molecules that can mount specific responses against a multitude of pathogens. Memory is a key feature of adaptive immunity, which allows organisms to respond more readily upon…
Aging is a universal consequence of life, yet researchers have identified no universal theme. This manuscript considers aging from the perspective of entropy, wherein things fall apart. We first examine biological information change as a…
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,…
Both parasites in biological systems and adversarial forces in cybersecurity are often perceived as threats: disruptive elements that must be eliminated. However, these entities play a critical role in revealing systemic weaknesses, driving…
We define a novel quantitative strategy inspired by the ecological notion of nestedness to single out the scale at which innovation complexity emerges from the aggregation of specialized building blocks. Our analysis not only suggests that…
Complex systems are characterized by specific time-dependent interactions among their many constituents. As a consequence they often manifest rich, non-trivial and unexpected behavior. Examples arise both in the physical and non-physical…
In a previous paper the authors argued the case for incorporating ideas from innate immunity into artificial immune systems (AISs) and presented an outline for a conceptual framework for such systems. A number of key general properties…
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…
Herd immunity is shaped not only by the infection capacity of a spreading epidemic or the contact structure of the hosting population, but also by how and under what circumstances individuals acquire immunity. Immunization strategies may…