Jozsef Prechl | Searcharxiv

arXiv2025

Statistical thermodynamics of the binding energy super-landscape in the adaptive immune system

Adaptive humoral immunity, from the physical perspective, can be regarded as the self-organization of the binding energy landscape of antibodies. In biological terms, the humoral immune system evolves and adapts its repertoire of antigen binding molecules so as to maintain its molecular integrity by controlled removal of antibody-antigen complexes. Here we introduce a super-landscape model, created by the fusion of binding energy landscapes of the antibody repertoire, that can be described by the distribution of interaction energies and deformation parameters of chemical thermodynamic potentials in the system. These deformation parameters not only characterize the partition function of the ensemble and the network of interactions in the system but also the asymmetry of generalized logistic distributions obtained in immunoassays when probing the system. Overall, a statistical thermodynamics approach is provided for a deeper theoretical insight into the dynamical self-organization of the adaptive immune system and into the interpretation of experimental results of immunoassays.

q-bio.OT↗

arXiv2023

Complex physical properties of an adaptive, self-organizing biological system

The physical interpretation of the functioning of the adaptive immune system, which has been thoroughly characterized on genetic and molecular levels, provides a unique opportunity to define an adaptive self-organizing biological system in its entirety. This paper describes a configuration space model of immune function, where directed chemical potentials of the system constitute a space of interactions. In the physical sense, the humoral adaptive immune system adjusts the chemical potential of all available antigenic molecules by tuning the chemical potential and organizing the network hierarchy of its sensor-effector molecules, antibodies. The coupling of sensors and effectors allows the system to adjust the thermodynamic activity of antigens and antibodies, while network organization helps minimize chemical potentials and maximize diversity. Mathematically the system couples the variance of Gaussian distributed interaction energies in its interaction space to the exponentially distributed chemical potentials of its effector molecules to maintain its stationary state. This process creates a scale-free network in interaction space, where absolute thermodynamic activity corresponds to node degree. In the thermodynamic interpretation, the system is an ensemble carrying out {mu}N work, adjusting chemical potentials according to the changes in the chemical potentials of the surroundings. The validity of the model is supported by identifying an interaction flexibility index, the corresponding variables in thermodynamics and network science, and by confirming its applicability to the humoral immune system. Overall, this statistical thermodynamics model of adaptive immunity describes how adaptive biological self-organization arises from the maintenance of a scale-free, directed interaction network with fractal topology.

q-bio.MN↗