Diversity of immune strategies explained by adaptation to pathogen statistics

Biological organisms have evolved a wide range of immune mechanisms to defend themselves against pathogens. Beyond molecular details, these mechanisms differ in how protection is acquired, processed, and passed on to subsequent generations-differences that may be essential to long-term survival. Her...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 113; no. 31; p. 8630
Main Authors: Mayer, Andreas, Mora, Thierry, Rivoire, Olivier, Walczak, Aleksandra M
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 02.08.2016
Subjects:
Adaptation, Physiological - immunology
Adaptive Immunity - immunology
Algorithms
Animals
Biological Evolution
Computer Simulation
Humans
Immunity, Innate - immunology
Models, Immunological
CRISPR immunity
bet hedging
evolution of immunity
adaptive immunity
immune systems
ISSN:1091-6490, 1091-6490
Online Access:Get more information
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Biological organisms have evolved a wide range of immune mechanisms to defend themselves against pathogens. Beyond molecular details, these mechanisms differ in how protection is acquired, processed, and passed on to subsequent generations-differences that may be essential to long-term survival. Here, we introduce a mathematical framework to compare the long-term adaptation of populations as a function of the pathogen dynamics that they experience and of the immune strategy that they adopt. We find that the two key determinants of an optimal immune strategy are the frequency and the characteristic timescale of the pathogens. Depending on these two parameters, our framework identifies distinct modes of immunity, including adaptive, innate, bet-hedging, and CRISPR-like immunities, which recapitulate the diversity of natural immune systems.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:1091-6490
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1600663113