Some large deviation estimates for an Erlang queue of phosphorylated T-cell receptors

T-cell activation can be viewed as a stochastic process occurring over a finite time interaction with an antigen presenting cell (APC). T-cell commits to activation based on a finite number of T-cell receptor (TCR) phosphorylation events;the high specificity and sensitivity of T-cells indicating that information on ligand quality can be extracted with precision. In this paper, a certain (Erlang) queue model is proposed for T-cell activation, which is treated under two criteria or strategiesthat utilize the history of TCR phosphorylation to discriminate ligands. The major result obtained in this paper in the above context is the determination of the most probable way the phosphorylated TCRs achieve a given threshold (for signal strength) under two particular strategies, using Wentzell-Freidlin theory of large deviations for processes.

Keywords: T-cell activation, TCR-pMHC interaction, variational problem for most probable path, Wentzell-Freidlin theory.

Doi: 10.4038/jnsfsr.v39i1.2918

J.Natn.Sci.Foundation Sri Lanka 2011 39 (1): 03-12