Sufficiency verification of HIV-1 pathogenesis based on multi-agent simulation

  • Authors:

  • GUO Zaiyi;HAN Hann Kwang;TAY Joc Cing

  • Affiliations:

  • Nanyang Technological University, Singapore;Nanyang Technological University, Singapore;Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  • Venue:
  • GECCO '05 Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Researchers of HIV-1 are today, still unable to determine exactly the biological mechanisms that cause AIDS. Various mechanisms have been hypothesized and their existences have been experimentally verified, but whether they are sufficient to account for the observed disease progression is still in question. To better understand the phenomena, HIV-1 researchers turn to scientific models for hypothesis verification. Modeling methods which rely on differential calculus to describe population dynamics, can be inconvenient for predicting nonuniform interactions on a spatial dimension. Multi-Agent (or MA) modeling approaches, on the other hand, views the immune system as a hierarchical structure of cooperating and competing agents, operating with highly coupled behaviours to exhibit emergent complexity. We adopt the latter approach to simulate the pathogenesis of HIV-1. We show the model design and the emergent results for four well-known hypotheses: Direct Effect on CD4+ cells, Rapid Viral Mutation, Syncytium Formation, and Filling of CD4+ Receptor sites under the influence of a null model for an adaptive response to HIV-1. We give the logical basis for our methodology and clarify the semantics for 'model accuracy'. Preliminary simulation results indicate that AIDS is more likely to be caused by either Rapid Viral Mutation or Syncytium Formation.