Nordita program on         From Molecular Basis to Predictability and Control of Evolution        Stockholm, 24 July 2019

Affinity maturation of antibodies and the puzzle of HIV low spike density

               

                Assaf Amitai            Shenshen Wang   Hanrong Chen       Arup K. Chakraborty      

Mehran Kardar (MIT)


Outline

I.       Introduction: B cells, Antibodies, Antigens, and the puzzle of low HIV spike density                                    

II.      Affinity Maturation: Germinal Center, Rapid evolution of antibodies, Fisher and Price equations

III.      Fitness & Evolution: Competition for virus capture and proliferation signal from helper T cells

IV.     Optimal density for eliciting potent antibodies, and implications for nanoparticle vaccination & HIV spikes

V.      Broadly neutralizing Antibodies: Controlling affinity maturation against a mutable virus

VI.    Predicting evolution of viral sequences: Mean-field dynamics on a fitness landscape

VII.  Summary