2020/06/10 by M. Reza Shaebani, Robin Jose, Ludger Santen +2 · 34 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Immunology and Microbiology · Physics and Astronomy · #Artificial Immune Systems Applications #Biological system #Biology #Computer science #Coupling (piping) #Diffusion and Search Dynamics #Immune system #Immunotherapy and Immune Responses #Materials science #Persistence (discontinuity) #Persistence length #Physics #Statistical physics #cond-mat.soft #physics.bio-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.125.268102
published in Physical Review Letters 125(26), 268102 (American Physical Society) · 6 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2020/06/10 · openalex publication_date 2020/12/28 · arxiv updated 2021/01/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Migration of immune cells within the human body allows them to fulfill their main function of detecting pathogens. We present experimental evidence showing the optimality of the search strategy of these cells, which is of crucial importance to achieve an efficient immune response. We find that the speed and directional persistence of migrating dendritic cells in our in vitro experiments are highly correlated, which enables them to reduce their search time. We introduce theoretically a new class of random search optimization problems by minimizing the mean first-passage time (MFPT) with respect to the strength of the coupling between influential parameters. We derive an analytical expression for the MFPT in a confined geometry and verify that the correlated motion enhances the search efficiency if the mean persistence length is sufficiently shorter than the confinement size. Our correlated search optimization approach provides an efficient searching recipe and predictive power in a broad range of correlated stochastic processes.