ArticleeLife2021
Optimal evolutionary decision-making to store immune memory.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Design principles of the cytotoxic CD8Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Biological Systems Depend on Communication Over Distances: A Review of the Fundamental Mechanisms, Associated challenges, and the Potential Effect of the Constrained Disorder Principle.Acta biotheoretica · 2026Review
- Design principles of the cytotoxic CD8bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Design principles of the cytotoxic CD8ArXiv · 2025Article
- Minimal framework for optimizing vaccination protocols targeting highly mutable pathogens.Physical review. E · 2024Article
- Steering and controlling evolution - from bioengineering to fighting pathogens.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2023Review
- Article
- Two complementary features of humoral immune memory confer protection against the same or variant antigens.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Affinity maturation for an optimal balance between long-term immune coverage and short-term resource constraints.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Optimal immune specificity at the intersection of host life history and parasite epidemiology.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The adaptive immune system provides a diverse set of molecules that can mount specific responses against a multitude of pathogens. Memory is a key feature of adaptive immunity, which allows organisms to respond more readily upon re-infections. However, differentiation of memory cells is still one of the least understood cell fate decisions. Here, we introduce a mathematical framework to characterize optimal strategies to store memory to maximize the utility of immune response over an organism's lifetime. We show that memory production should be actively regulated to balance between affinity and cross-reactivity of immune receptors for an effective protection against evolving pathogens. Moreover, we predict that specificity of memory should depend on the organism's lifespan, and shorter lived organisms with fewer pathogenic encounters should store more cross-reactive memory. Our framework provides a baseline to gauge the efficacy of immune memory in light of an organism's coevolutionary history with pathogens.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.