Artificial Immune Systems

Artificial Immune Systems

The Artificial Immune System paradigm (AIS) is inspired by the biological immune system whose main goal is to protect the human body from the attack of foreign pathogens such as virus, fungus or other parasites. The biological immune system is capable of distinguishing between the normal components of our organism and the foreign materials that can cause us harm that are known as antigens. The molecules called antibodies play the main role in the immune system response in that the immune response is specific to a certain antigen. Thus when an antigen is detected, those antibodies that best recognize an antigen will proliferate by cloning. Then the new cloned cells undergo a mutation or hypermutation process so that their receptor population will be increased. These mutations experienced by the clones are inversely proportional to their affinity to the antigen, which means that those antibodies with the highest affinity suffer the lowest mutation rates, whereas the lowest affinity antibodies have high mutation rates. After this mutation process ends, the antibodies’ affinity in the immune system is improved and the immune system returns to its normal condition by eliminating the extra cells. However, some cells are turned into memory cells so that when the immune system is later attacked by the same type of antigen (or a similar one), these memory cells are activated, presenting a better and more efficient response. Artificial immune systems are motivated from such immunology in order to develop systems capable of performing a wide range of tasks.