Using a new mathematical model to analyze a detailed set of viral load data collected from five infected patients after the administration of a potent inhibitor of HIV-1 protease, it was estimated that productively infected cells have, on average, a lifespan of 2.2 days (t[sub 1/2]=1.6 days) and...

During primary HIV infection the viral load in plasma increases, reaches a peak, and then declines. Phillips has suggested that the decline is due to a limitation in the number of cells susceptible to HIV infection, while other authors have suggested that the decline in viremia is due to an...

A model employing separate dose-dependent response functions for proliferation and differentiation of idiotypically interacting $B$ cell clones is presented. For each clone the population dynamics of proliferating $B$ cells, non-proliferating $B$ cells and free antibodies are considered. An...

The administration of a genetically engineered defective interfering virus (DIV) that interferes with HIV-1 replication has been proposed as a therapy for HIV-1 infection and AIDS. The proposed interfering virus, which is designed to superinfect HIV-1 infected cells, carries ribozymes that...

During an immune response the affinity of antibodies that react with the antigen that triggered the response increases with time, a phenomenon known as affinity maturation. The molecular basis of affinity maturation has been partially elucidated. It involves the somatic mutation of immunoglobin...

We propose a new function for describing the rate of T cell proliferation in response to peptides on antigen presenting cells. The model improves an earlier model of ours by allowing for a true maximum proliferation rate of the T cells. This is achieved by a simple change of variables that...

We have calculated the base pair probability distribution for the secondary structure of a full length HIV-1 genome using the partition function approach introduced by MasCaskill (1990). By analyzing the full distribution of base pair probabilities instead of a restricted number of secondary...

A binary model of the immune system is used to study the effects of evolution on the genetic encoding for antibody molecules. We report experiments which show that the evolution of immune system genes, simulated by the genetic algorithm, can induce a high degree of genetic organization even...

Cross-reactive memory responses occur when the immune system is primed by one strain of a pathogen and challenged with a related, but different strain. Much of the nature of a cross-reactive response is determined by the quantity and distribution of the memory cells, raised to the primary...

We study the equilibrium binding properties of multivalent ligands to cell surface receptors. In contrast to most of the previous studies, which assumed the ligand concentration to be much larger than the receptor concentration, we examine the influence on the binding properties of cell density...