Bistability in fluctuating environments. Implications in tumor immunology

✍ Scribed by R. Lefever; W. Horsthemke

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1979
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 925 KB
• Volume: 41
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1522-9602
• DOI: 10.1016/s0092-8240(79)80003-8

✦ Synopsis

We analyze under different environmental conditions the occurrence of bistability, i.e. of two simultaneously stable steady states, in a biological model system .which describes the immunological interactions of neoplastic-target cells and cytotoxic-effector cells. As a result of environmental fluctuations such complex biological systems may undergo drastic modifications of their steady state properties. In particular, when the variance of fluctuations increases around a well defined mean value, transition phenomena appear which are absent in the usual bifurcation diagrams. The properties of the non-fluctuating systems can no longer be considered as a first approximation of the properties of the real system. Interestingly, in the case of the model, these transitions correspond to a rejection of tumor cells.