An introduction to the immune network

Divergence in antigen response of the immune network is discussed, based on shape-space modelling. The present model extends the shape-space model by introducing the evolution of specificity of idiotypes. When the amount of external antigen increases, stability of the immune network changes and the network responds to the antigen. It is shown that specific and non-specific responses emerge as a function of antigen levels. A specific response is observed with a fixed point att...

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 study a possible network model of immune memory. In our model stochastic processes govern all events. A major novelty of this approach is that it permits studying random variations in the immune process. Four basic components are simulated...

We investigate a model where idiotypes (characterizing B-lymphocytes and antibodies of an immune system) and anti-idiotypes are represented by complementary bitstrings of a given length d allowing for a number of mismatches (matching rules). In this model, the vertices of the hypercube in dimension d represent the potential repertoire of idiotypes. A random set of (with probability p) occupied vertices corresponds to the expressed repertoire of idiotypes at a given moment. Ve...

We argue that immune system is an adaptive complex system. It is shown that it has emergent properties. Its network structure is of the small world network type. The network is of the threshold type, which helps in avoiding autoimmunity. It has the property that every antigen (e.g.virus or bacteria) is typically attacked by more than one effector. This stabilizes the equilibrium state. Modelling complex systems is discussed. Cellular automata (CA) type models are successful b...

An adaptive agent predicting the future state of an environment must weigh trust in new observations against prior experiences. In this light, we propose a view of the adaptive immune system as a dynamic Bayesian machinery that updates its memory repertoire by balancing evidence from new pathogen encounters against past experience of infection to predict and prepare for future threats. This framework links the observed initial rapid increase of the memory pool early in life f...

In this paper we review the trajectory of a model proposed by Stauffer and Weisbuch in 1992 to describe the evolution of the immune repertoire and present new results about its dynamical behavior. Ten years later this model, which is based on the ideas of the immune network as proposed by Jerne, has been able to describe a multi-connected network and could be used to reproduce immunization and aging experiments performed with mice. Besides its biological implications, the phy...

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 its entirety. This paper describes a configuration space model of immune function, where directed chemical potentials of the system constitute a space of interactions. In the physical sense, the humoral adaptive immune system adjusts the ch...

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 pathogens, the question that still remains unexplored is how the Th cells can acquire better ways to bias the responses of immune cells for eliminating pathogens more efficiently by translating the recognized antigen information into regulatory si...

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 their own immunological objectives. The affinity maturation process is widely viewed as a heuristic to solve the global optimization problem of finding B cells with high affinity to the antigen. However, memory B cells appear to be purposely...

An improved version of the symmetrical immune network theory is presented, in which killing is ascribed to IgM antibodies, while IgG antibodies are stimulatory. A recurring theme in the symmetrical network theory is the concept of co-selection. Co-selection is the mutual positive selection of individual members from within two diverse populations, such that selection of members within each population is dependent on interaction with (recognition of) one or more members within...