Artificial immune systems

Abstract

The biological immune system is a robust, complex, adaptive system that defends the body from foreign pathogens. It is able to categorize all cells (or molecules) within the body asself or nonself substances. It does this with the help of a distributed task force that has theintelligence to take action from a local and also a global perspective using its network of chemical messengers for communication. There are two major branches of the immune system. The innate immune system is an unchanging mechanism that detects and destroys certain invading organisms, whilst the adaptive immune system responds to previously unknown foreign cells and builds a response to them that can remain in the body over a long period of time. This remarkable information processing biological system has caught the attention of computer science in recent years.