Quantifying immune receptor diversity.

Speaker(s)

Aleksandra Walczak

Affiliation

Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Ecole Normale Supérieure

Date

March 6, 2013, 10:30 a.m.

Room

room 5820

Seminar

Seminar Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

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Recognition of pathogens relies on the diversity of immune receptor
proteins. Recent experiments that sequence the entire immune cell
repertoires provide a new opportunity for quantitative insight into
naturally occurring diversity and how it is generated.  The
generation process is implemented via a series of stochastic molecular
events involving gene choices and random nucleotide  insertions
between, and deletions from, genes. I will describe how  we can
attempt to quantify the diversity of the receptors formed in  this
complex process and point to the origins of diversity in these
sequences.

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