Regensburg 2002 – scientific programme

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DY: Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 46: Poster

DY 46.73: Poster

Thursday, March 14, 2002, 15:30–18:00, D

Modeling co-evolution: A quasispecies approach to the immune system — •Christel Kamp and Stefan Bornholdt — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Kiel, Leibnizstr. 15, D-24098 Kiel

We sketch a framework for modeling co-evolution as it occurs in the competition between viral evolution and adapting response of the immune system [1]. The basic idea is to model the dynamics of two quasispecies coupled by an asymmetric interaction representing mutual competition. In this co-adaptive system, besides the classical error catastrophe for high virus mutation rates, a second “adaptation-” catastrophe is observed when virus mutation rates are too small to escape immune attack. Regimes of viral error catastrophes are discussed as these are key benchmarks for an immune system optimizing its response to arbitrary viruses. A possible strategy for an optimal immune response is to reduce the range of allowed viral mutation rates to a minimum. From this requirement we derive constraints on B-cell mutation rates and receptor lengths and compare them to the situation observed in the human immune sytem.

[1] C. Kamp, S. Bornholdt, cond-mat/0108353 (2001)