European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology (ECMTB 2026)

Multi-Type Birth-Death Processes with Mean-Field Interactions for B-cell Phylodynamics

MS93-07

16 Jul 2026, 11:40

20m

05.12 - HS (University of Graz)

Minisymposium Talk Numerical, Computational, and Data-Driven Methods Stochastic agent- and particle-based models in biology: methods and analytical insights

Speaker

Sebastian Hummel (BOKU University Vienna)

Description

Antibody binding affinity maturation is a crucial process of the adaptive immune system. Motivated to model this process, we formulate a system of multi-type birth-death processes that can interact through their empirical distribution. We show that the empirical distribution process of the system of birth-death processes converges to a deterministic probability measure-valued flow as the system size tends to infinity. In this limit, a focal process evolves as a multi-type birth-death process with rates governed by the probability measure-valued flow, which is, in turn, the flow of the one-dimensional marginal distribution of the focal process. Individual processes become independent in the limit, which suggests inference to be feasible for this model.

Bibliography

@article{dewitt2024mean,
title={Mean-field interacting multi-type birth--death processes with a view to applications in phylodynamics},
author={DeWitt, William S and Evans, Steven N and Hiesmayr, Ella and Hummel, Sebastian},
journal={Theoretical Population Biology},
volume={159},
pages={1--12},
year={2024},
publisher={Elsevier}
}