Emergence of Immune Memory and Tolerance in an Asymmetric Idiotype Network

Abstract

This study proposes an idiotype network model system adopted an “asymmetric” idiotype – anti-idiotypic interaction, and shows realizing immune tolerance as well as immune memory on a transient dynamics. To date, the immune tolerance was a problematic phenomenon for traditional idiotype network models adopted “symmetric” idiotypic interaction because they failed to reproduce it. This paper reports the proposed model succeeds in the display of the immune tolerance by considering an asymmetric anti-idiotypic interaction. Actually, a computational experiment clarifies that its establishment associates with high anti-idiotypic idiotype’s population level of when antigens are re-dosed. This result indicates what the anti-idiotypic idiotype functions effectively plays a decisive role for the establishment of the immune tolerance. Lastly, this study closes at the suggestion that the asymmetric modeling is more immunologically relevant than the symmetric one which most theoreticians supported so far.