Evolutionary dynamics of immune repertoires

Our adaptive immune system protects us against a wide variety of pathogens using a broad repertoire of specific receptors expressed by B and T cells, whose concentrations adapt to past experiences to encode immune memory. In this talk I will discuss how the diversity of receptors is generated and how it evolves and self-organises over time to protect us efficiently. I will present models of population dynamics as well as design principles of optimal memory encoding, and will relate them to high-throughput sequencing data. I will also discuss diversity measures and the power-law nature of the distribution of clone sizes observed in the repertoire.