Changing n2 Sample Clauses

Changing n2. ‌ Initially, under the same rules and conditions for thymic selection and peripheral activation, the number of DC encounters in the periphery was set as the same as the number of DC encounters a T cell makes in the thymus (n1 = n2 = 4000). However, this does not depict biological realities. During the time-span a T cell spends in one lymph node, T cells encounter ≈40-80 different DCs22, thus we chose an n2 of 60 to evaluate the probability of autoimmunity during the T cell’s first lymph node scanning after it escapes the thymus. This choice of n2 = 60 was set as our lower bound for n2. The maximum probability of autoimmunity when n2 = 60 is 5%. But we then use different n2 values to understand this change in probability during the lifetime of a T cell. As n2 increases, the probability of autoimmunity increases (Figure 2). Moreover, the lifetime of a T cell is 3 years, thus we chose n2 = 200, 000 as our upper bound, which corresponds with a maximum probability of autoimmunity 90.6%. There is no empirical evidence of autoimmunity disease against dendritic cells so we need to further evaluate the effects of different mechanisms that must be in play to prevent autoimmunity. By approximating the maximum probability of autoim- munity, we see that the change in n2 is directly proportional to the change in maximum probability of autoimmunit (Appendix C).