Séminaire du LPTMS : Andreas Mayer (Princeton)

A Langevin approach to the dynamics of the human immune system

Andreas Mayer (Princeton)

Online seminar — Zoom Meeting ID: 951 1138 2280 — Passcode: Ask L. Mazza or D. Petrov —

Note the unusual time!

New sequencing techniques put studying populations with a very large number of distinct species within reach. As the number of species increases, so does the number of interactions between species and with the environment. Statistical physics provides a framework to adapt ecological theory to this new setting: key phenomena can be captured by replacing interactions with effective stochastic forces. In my talk, I will present how we have applied this Langevin approach to study the dynamics of adaptive immunity. We propose a theory for the emergence and maintenance of an observed power-law scaling in the sizes of different immune cell populations. Remarkably, linking our theory to snapshots of immune composition at different ages we demonstrate that exposures in infancy leave a lifelong imprint with implications for pathogen defense and autoimmunity.


Date/Time : 12/01/2021 - 14:00 - 15:00

Location : LPTMS (100% online seminar)

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