Simulating the Immune Response on a Distributed Parallel Computer

Abstract

The application of ideas and methods of statistical mechanics to problems of biological relevance is one of the most promising frontiers of theoretical and computational mathematical physics.1,2 Among others, the computer simulation of the immune system dynamics stands out as one of the prominent candidates for this type of investigations. In the recent years immunological research has been drawing increasing benefits from the resort to advanced mathematical modeling on modern computers.3,4 Among others, Cellular Automata (CA), i.e., fully discrete dynamical systems evolving according to boolean laws, appear to be extremely well suited to computer simulation of biological systems.5 A prominent example of immunological CA is represented by the Celada–Seiden automaton, that has proven capable of providing several new insights into the dynamics of the immune system response. To date, the Celada–Seiden automaton was not in a position to exploit the impressive advances of computer technology, and notably parallel processing, simply because no parallel version of this automaton had been developed yet. In this paper we fill this gap and describe a parallel version of the Celada–Seiden cellular automaton aimed at simulating the dynamic response of the immune system. Details on the parallel implementation as well as performance data on the IBM SP2 parallel platform are presented and commented on.