A Langevin approach to dynamics of the human immune system

Advances in sequencing enable studying dynamics of populations with a very large number of distinct species in complex environments. Statistical physics provides a framework to adapt ecological theory to this new setting: to tame the combinatorical explosion of parameters describing all interactions we attempt a simplification using effective stochastic forces. In my talk, I will present initial results applying this Langevin approach to immune repertoire dynamics. I will propose a theory for the emergence and maintenance of the empirically observed power-law scaling of clone sizes. Remarkably, our theory predicts that exposures in infancy leave a lifelong imprint on our immune defenses with implications for pathogen defense and autoimmunity.