Invariance under Structure Translation as the Origin of Host Immune Capacity Conservation from Noether's Theorem

Abstract

Biological processes are reproducible, including immunity. Different healthy individuals can exhibit similar disease courses and protective serum antibody levels when confronting the same pathogen. This widely observed phenomenon is the foundation of almost all immunological experiments and clinical trials. This is regarded as a property of immune homeostasis. But why? Modern studies reveal that the core processes in adaptive immunity are governed predominantly by stochastic events, including V(D)J recombination and affinity maturation. The final composition of the serum antibody repertoire in each individual is also unique. What constrains these microscopic random processes to converge onto consistent, predictable macroscopic trajectories? What is the consistency behind this degeneracy? Here, we address these questions by introducing a theoretical framework based on Lagrangian analytical mechanics. We reformulate adaptive immune recognition as a dynamical system evolving in a high-dimensional immunological state space, with generalized coordinates representing the immune repertoire configuration and the effective antigenic structure. We identify a continuous symmetry: the system's action remains invariant under specific translations within the antigenic structure space. Noether's theorem dictates a consistency constraint, I, which acts as a physical constraint on the system's evolution. It mandates that, irrespective of the specific stochastic trajectory taken at the molecular level, the system must converge to the same terminal state for a given challenge. This unified principle offers a first-principles explanation for immune phenomenon. We transform the concept of immune homeostasis from a phenomenological description into a quantifiable, consistent physical entity called Immune Capacity, and establish a foundational framework for a unified, predictive immunology.