Robustness and Evolvability of the B Cell Mutator Mechanism

We present a model that considers the maturation of the antibody population following primary antigen presentation as a global optimization problem [TT99]. The trade-off that emerges from our model describes the balance between the safety of mutations that lead to local improvements in affinity and the necessity of the system to undergo global reconfigurations in the antibody’s shape in order to achieve its goals, in this example of fast-paced evolution. The parameter p which quantifies this trade-off appears to be itself both robust and evolvable. This parallels the rapidity and consistency of the optimization operating during the biologic response. In this paper, we explore the robust qualities and evolvability of this tunable control parameter, p.