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, 11:20

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

Abstract
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.

Names and affiliations of coauthors
William S. DeWitt (University of Washington)
Steven N. Evans (University of California, Berkeley)
Ella Hiesmayr (CNRS and ENS Lyon)

Bibliographic reference
DeWitt, William S., et al. “Mean-Field Interacting Multi-Type Birth–Death Processes with a View to Applications in Phylodynamics.” Theoretical Population Biology, vol. 159, Oct. 2024, pp. 1–12., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tpb.2024.07.002.