May 14, 2015
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 distributions, which mimic B cells receptors' promiscuity. We derive dynamical equations for the order parameters quantifying the B cells activation and study the nature and stability of the stationary solutions using linear stability analysis and Monte Carlo simulations.The system's behaviour is studied in different scaling regimes of the number of B cells, dilution in the interactions and number of antigens. Our analysis shows that: (i) B cells activation depends on the number of receptors in such a way that cells with an insufficient number of triggered receptors cannot be activated; (ii) idiotypic (i.e. B-B) interactions enhance parallel activation of multiple clones, improving the system's ability to fight different pathogens in parallel; (iii) the higher the fraction of antigens within the host the harder is for the system to sustain parallel signalling to B cells, crucial for the homeostatic control of cell numbers.
Similar papers 1
May 4, 2016
In this work we use belief-propagation techniques to study the equilibrium behaviour of a minimal model for the immune system comprising interacting T and B clones. We investigate the effect of the so-called idiotypic interactions among complementary B clones on the system's activation. Our result shows that B-B interactions increase the system's resilience to noise, making clonal activation more stable, while increasing the cross-talk between different clones. We derive anal...
January 21, 2010
The aim of this work is to try to bridge over theoretical immunology and disordered statistical mechanics. Our long term hope is to contribute to the development of a quantitative theoretical immunology from which practical applications may stem. In order to make theoretical immunology appealing to the statistical physicist audience we are going to work out a research article which, from one side, may hopefully act as a benchmark for future improvements and developments, from...
February 25, 2012
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 biological prescriptions, links connecting B-cells and T-cells are sparse. Interestingly, the dilution performed on links is shown to make the system able to orchestrate parallel strategies to fight several pathogens at the same time; this m...
July 8, 2019
The adaptive immune system is a dynamical, self-organized multiscale system that protects vertebrates from both pathogens and internal irregularities, such as tumours. For these reason it fascinates physicists, yet the multitude of different cells, molecules and sub-systems is often also petrifying. Despite this complexity, as experiments on different scales of the adaptive immune system become more quantitative, many physicists have made both theoretical and experimental con...
December 9, 2010
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 mature B lymphocytes. We consider only B lymphocytes: despite this is of course an oversimplification, however such a toy model may help to highlight features of their interactions otherwise shadowed by main driven mechanisms due to i.e. he...
October 7, 2021
The clonal expansion of T cells during an infection is tightly regulated to ensure an appropriate immune response against invading pathogens. Although experiments have mapped the trajectory from expansion to contraction, the interplay between mechanisms that control this response are not fully understood. Based on experimental data, we propose a model in which the dynamics of CD4+ T cell expansion is controlled through the interactions between T cells and antigen-presenting c...
July 2, 2015
The adaptive immune system relies on the diversity of receptors expressed on the surface of B and T-cells to protect the organism from a vast amount of pathogenic threats. The proliferation and degradation dynamics of different cell types (B cells, T cells, naive, memory) is governed by a variety of antigenic and environmental signals, yet the observed clone sizes follow a universal power law distribution. Guided by this reproducibility we propose effective models of somatic ...
July 25, 2014
The repertoire of lymphocyte receptors in the adaptive immune system protects organisms from diverse pathogens. A well-adapted repertoire should be tuned to the pathogenic environment to reduce the cost of infections. We develop a general framework for predicting the optimal repertoire that minimizes the cost of infections contracted from a given distribution of pathogens. The theory predicts that the immune system will have more receptors for rare antigens than expected from...
March 1, 2017
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 response to pathogenic and self-antigenic stimulations, as well as the statistics of novel lymphocyte receptors introduced throughout life. Recent experiments, ranging from high-throughput immune repertoire sequencing to quantification of the...
December 10, 2012
The ability of the adaptive immune system to discriminate between self and non-self mainly stems from the ontogenic clonal-deletion of lymphocytes expressing strong binding affinity with self-peptides. However, some self-directed lymphocytes may evade selection and still be harmless due to a mechanism called clonal anergy. As for B lymphocytes, two major explanations for anergy developed over three decades: according to "Varela theory", it stems from a proper orchestration of...