Modelling immune network through cellular automata: a unified mechanism of immunological memory

Abstract

The populations of the various types of immunocompetent cells in the immune system are described as cellular automata and the population dynamics of these cells are formulated in terms of dynamical maps in discrete time. Both intra-clonal interactions (i.e., interactions among the cell types belonging to the same clone) and inter-clonal interactions (i.e., interactions among the cell types belonging to different clones) are included in the models proposed here. While the intra-clonal interactions are shown to play a crucial role in the primary response of some clones and in the formation of the immunological memory, the inter-clonal interactions are responsible for retaining the memory through a dynamical process driven by the mutual stimulation of the clones. We present the results for two different types of connectivity, namely, a "necklace" network and a network in "shape space".