Physics Colloquium: Prediction in immune repertoires
- Event Type
- Seminar/Symposium
- Sponsor
- Department of Physics
- Date
- Dec 8, 2021 10:00 am
- Speaker
- Aleksandra Walczak
- Contact
- Marjorie Gamel
- mgamel@illinois.edu
- Phone
- 217-333-3762
- Views
- 83
- Originating Calendar
- Physics - Colloquium
Living systems often attempt to calculate and predict the future state of the environment. Given the stochastic nature of many biological systems how is that possible? I will show that even a system as complicated as the immune system has reproducible outcomes. Yet predicting the future state of a complex environment requires weighing the trust in new observations against prior experiences. In this light, I will present 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.