"Mathematician cracks immunity codes"

[Tony Mach]

Something I have seen, maybe of interest to some.

Mathematician cracks immunity codes - The Independent (Ireland)
Tuesday January 10 2012
http://www.independent.ie/breaking-...hematician-cracks-immunity-codes-2984815.html

An Irish mathematician has helped crack complex codes about our immune system which may ultimately lead to better treatments for Crohn's, coeliac disease, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

Dr Ken Duffy, of NUI Maynooth's Hamilton Institute, made the breakthrough on a team of international scientists aiming to design new vaccines for crippling illnesses.

The revolutionary research, published in the prestigious US-based journal Science, turns the existing rules on white blood cell behaviour and the body's defences on their head.

"The science community will be surprised. This is very much a different way of viewing things. It's not the standard accepted paradigm," Dr Duffy said.

The last sentence makes me wary. But hey, he claims he found something, so everybody look into it and see if he's right.

And it was published in the journal Science, so what could possibly go wrong?

I think this is the paper (I gave every sentence of the abstract an paragraph):

Activation-Induced B Cell Fates Are Selected by Intracellular Stochastic Competition
Ken R. Duffy et. al.
Published Online January 5 2012
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1213230
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/01/04/science.1213230

Abstract

In response to stimulation, B lymphocytes pursue a large number of distinct fates important for immune regulation.

Whether each cell's fate is determined by external direction, internal stochastic processes, or directed asymmetric division is unknown.

Measurement of times to isotype switch, to develop into a plasmablast, and to divide or to die for thousands of cells indicated that each fate is pursued autonomously and stochastically.

As a consequence of competition between these processes, censorship of alternative outcomes predicts intricate correlations that are observed in the data.

Stochastic competition can explain how the allocation of a proportion of B cells to each cell fate is achieved.

The B cell may exemplify how other complex cell differentiation systems are controlled.


Received for publication 26 August 2011.
Accepted for publication 29 November 2011.

At least they took some time to review it.

Or not:

The breakthrough was fast-tracked for publication last week by editors at Science who regard the findings as being of major importance.

 

[Snow Leopard]

The fact is that there is no good model for the development of B-cell autoimmunity, so papers like this should very much be encouraged even if they are (most) likely to be incorrect.

 

[Tia]

WoW! That's great news!