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many objects. It forces the programmer and the immunologist to have a clear idea of
what is unique to each clone and what is common to all of them (for instance, if the
genetic sequence of their receptor is unique, it can be stored only once in the original
lymphocyte and make all clones refer to it). The discussion about this DP should also
result in a simulation choice between a “type-based simulation”, for which an object
is a cellular type and a key attribute is its concentration and an “instance-based simu-
lation”, for which there are as many objects as cellular instances of any type. The
concentration of a type is now derived from the number of explicit objects really
present in memory and acting during the simulation. Three other DPs are roughly
illustrated in the figure below.
APC
MHC
APCSubClass1
APCSubClass2
APCSubClass3
MHC class I
MHC class II
The “bridge DP”
CellFunctionality
1
0..1
0..1
Decorator
BasicCellFunctionality
AntigenReceptor
AntigenPrese
ntati on
Effectiveness
The “Decorator DP”
State
Lymphocite
Effector
Memory
Active
Naîve
The “State DP”
Fig. 5.
Three among the most useful Design Patterns: The “bridge”, the “Decorator” and the
“State”
The “bridge” DP aims at keeping clearly separated in the conception and the soft-
ware two different motivations for the specialization of classes. In the figure, APC
can give rise to more specific forms of them and, independently, MHC molecules can
