Abstract
The immune system represents the natural defense of an organism. It comprises a network of cells, molecules, and organs whose primary tasks are to defend the organism from pathogens, and to maintain its integrity. Since our knowledge of the immune system is still incomplete, formal modeling can help provide a better understanding of its underlying principles and organization. In this chapter we provide a brief introduction to the biology of the immune system, recalling several approaches used in the modeling of the immune system, and then describe a model based on P systems. Starting from a variant of P systems called client-server P systems, we use an abstract simulator as a useful intermediate step from a formal theory suitable for theoretical results to a software implementation of a molecular network. Finally, our approach leads to novel software able to provide new insights into the interactions influencing T cell behavior with the use of statistical correlations of the software experiments’ results.
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Ciobanu, G. (2006). Modeling Cell-Mediated Immunity by Means of P Systems. In: Ciobanu, G., Păun, G., Pérez-Jiménez, M.J. (eds) Applications of Membrane Computing. Natural Computing Series. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-29937-8_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-29937-8_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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