(14 January 2016) The latest issue of the journal Nature Scientific Reports features a study dedicated to how antibodies work. The authors are physicists at the University of Florence and the University of Orléans, who have shown how antibodies react to the aggression of a foreign body. The action is comparable to that of a goalkeeper performing a perfect defense. Researchers Duccio Fanelli and Marta Galanti (University of Florence – Interdepartmental Centre for the study of complex dynamics) and Francesco Piazza (University of Orléans, currently visiting professor at the University of Florence) described with a mathematical model the dynamics with which antibodies can bind efficiently to foreign molecules, antigens, marking them and making it possible to eliminate them. (Red)
