A virtual culture of CD4+ T lymphocytes.
The CD4+ T cell lineages Th1, Th2, Th17, and Treg, are mammalian cell types that differentiate from the common precursor naive CD4+ T cell. While there is a wealth of experimental data regarding the molecular and cellular signals involved in the differentiation of CD4+ T cells in vitro, there is still no consensus regarding the structure of the network of interactions at the molecular and cellular levels controlling this differentiation process. In this work, a virtual culture of cells is constructed by interconnecting several instances of an updated version of the regulatory network controlling the differentiation process of CD4+ T cells in mice. The virtual culture is a multi-compartment model with an instance of a regulatory network inside each compartment, thus simulating a simplified version of a cell culture in a well-stirred reactor. The virtual culture is able to describe the stable molecular expression patterns described for fully differentiated CD4+ T cells in mice, as well as the differentiation process from a precursor to a given effector cell in response to specific molecular stimuli.
Departamento de Biología Molecular y Biotecnología, Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México, México. lmendoza@biomedicas.unam.mx
Luis
L
Mendoza
D000818:Animals; D015496:CD4-Positive T-Lymphocytes / Q000166:cytology* / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D016207:Cytokines / Q000378:metabolism; D055641:Mathematical Concepts; D051379:Mice; D008954:Models, Biological; D015398:Signal Transduction; D049490:Systems Biology; D014584:User-Computer Interface
D016207:Cytokines