Maturation of the humoral immune response as an optimization problem.

Abstract excerpt

Efficient immune response often depends on the production of high affinity antibodies. We show analytically that the optimal strategy for a fast production of high affinity antibodies is to utilize a step-function mutation rate, i.e. a minimal mutation rate in early stages of the immune response, followed by a discontinuous switch to the maximal possible rate when the proliferating population of B-cells exceeds a...

Topics

• Animals
• Antibody Diversity
• Antibody Formation
• B-Lymphocytes
• Mathematics
• Models, Biological
• Mutation