Start
Oct 27, 2010 - 16:00
End
Oct 27, 2010 - 17:30
Venue
Creativity Hall (Room No. 118)
Event Type
Speaker
Prof. Arup K. Chakraborty Chemical Engineering Chemistry and Biological Engineering MIT Ragon Institute of MGH MIT & Harvard
Title
Understanding adaptive immunity: A crossroad of the physical life and engineering sciences
Abstract: Complex organisms like humans have an adaptive immune system that mounts pathogen-specific responses to diverse quickly evolving microbes for which the immune system is not pre-programmed. This flexible system can also go awry and autoimmune diseases result from the adaptive immune system failing to discriminate between markers of self and non-self. Adaptive immune responses are orchestrated by T lymphocytes (T cells). The immune response results from cooperative dynamic processes with many participating components that must act collectively for a phenomenon to emerge. Moreover these processes are stochastic and span multiple spatio-temporal scales. I will describe our work on T cell biology that brings together theoretical and computational studies (rooted in statistical physics and engineering kinetics) with experiments carried out by key collaborators (immunologists at medical schools) to shed light on the mechanisms underlying these complex multi-scale processes. I will begin by describing some work at the molecular scale which will become the input to thinking about a phenomenon in tissues which will then inform us about a factor that contributes to the ability of individuals with certain genes to neutralize HIV infections with higher probability.