About
This is a simplified model of how the human immune system works inside a capillary or other small blood vessel. The point of this model is to help visualize the interactions between red blood cells, white blood cells, and viruses. Just hearing or reading about how these cells interact can be confusing to help clarify this interaction, we made a model. In this model, there are four particles in the world, red blood cells, immune cells, viruses, and bacteria. The red blood cells are passive but can be infected. When an immune cell encounters an infected cell, viruses, or bacteria, the immune has a chance of killing the infected cell. When a virus encounters a cell of any kind, it has a chance to infect it. Cells infected by viruses will lyse after a certain number of steps. Bacteria will also reproduce by periodically dividing.
When creating the model, our original hypothesis was that the immune system would always win; much like in real life. Working on this model remotely was very difficult. Maintaining good communication was very difficult. Everything happened more slowly than if we were together in a work environment. For this reason, we were unable to get the model to the finish level we had hoped for.
When we first began planning for this model, it was going too far more complex, with helper t cells, macrophages, and neutrophils. We quickly realized that that level of complexity would go, against the purpose of our model; to give a simple visual representation of the human immune system.
What were the questions you planned for your model to help answer?
We had hoped that our model would be able to answer the question "what would happen in an infection of the immune system" in reference to the numbers of viruses, bacteria, red blood cells, and white blood cells.
What were your hypotheses about the answers to the questions when you started?
As stated above, we believed that the white blood cells would take control of the blood vessels, although that would only happen after the infection of numerous red blood cells.
What results and behaviors did you observe from using your model?
We had observed that the Red Blood Cells would first get infected, and then the white blood cells would catch up and disable the pathogens
Did your observations match your expectations? If not, why do you think they did not? What did this teach you about the topic you were modeling?
To a certain extent, we decided that the limited model of the immune system did match our observations. However, we noted that the lack of replication did undermine the use of the model, but it did teach us about how important life cycles are for
Did the results support your initial hypotheses? If not, what were your new hypotheses?
The results supported our initial hypothesis in that the immune system would eventually take control after the infection of numerous RBCs. However, this is an inaccurate model because we didn't have division of cells.
What changes did you have to make to your plans and your models to make your models more accurate and/or realistic?
We began to implement the lysis of red blood cells, and had planned to add division of cells but we eventually ran out of time to make that a reality. We also added the neutralization of pathogens by leukocytes.
What did you learn from working on this project?
We learned a lot about the interaction of different objects within the immune system by observing the particles within the simulated blood vessel. From a programming point of view, we learned alot about JavaScript objects and how they could be used to simplify the programming process
Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQGOcOUBi6s
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC104573/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSypUV6QUNw