Figure 4.
The duration of immune memory for a two-compartment model with independent homeostatic regulation in naive and memory compartments. In this model, the naive and memory cells differ in their properties, but the homeostasis acts independently in both compartments. We plot how the duration of immune memory (represented by the half-life of the population of pathogen-specific cells after stimulation, T1/2) will depend on the frequency of infection with different pathogens and the extent of clonal expansion to memory cells per pathogen. Parameters as in Fig. 2, with the carrying capacity of 108 cells equally divided in naive and memory compartments and input from thymus set to zero.