Integration of immune models using Petri nets

Abstract

Immune system has unique defense mechanisms such as innate, humoral and cellular immunity. These immunities are closely related to prevent pathogens from spreading in host and to clear them effectively. To achieve those mechanisms, particular processes, such as clonal expansion, positive and negative selection, and somatic hypermutation and so on, have been evolved. These properties inspired people to open a new field, called artificial immune systems that mimics and modifies immune behaviors to invent new technologies in other fields. To explain immune mechanisms, many mathematical models focusing on one particular phenomenon were developed. We developed an integrated immune model that enables to understand immune responses as a whole and to find new emergent properties of the immune system that could not be seen in separate models. We used a continuous Petri net as modeling language, because of its easiness of modeling and analysis.