Distinguishing multiple roles of T cell and macrophage involvement in determining lymph node fates during Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection
Fig 3
Experimental design for virtual infection: Virtual hosts defined and measured over time using a multi-scale model (MSM).
(A, B) Trajectory of antigen presenting cells (APCs) delineating the difference between virtual hosts representing (A) LTBI and (B) active pulmonary infection. These trajectories, generated from our HostSim model of pulmonary infection [39], capture two major motifs of how APCs are sent from lungs to LNs in response to multiple lung granulomas (see S1 Fig). Details of different compartments for the MSM are in Fig 2. (C) Prior to pulmonary infection, multiple virtual lymph nodes within each uninfected host maintain a stable, steady state population of immune cells. (D) Following a simulated pulmonary infection with Mtb at day 1, individual LNs become activated when APCs carrying Mtb antigen from the lungs enter the LN by day 15 and antigen presentation induces clonal expansion of T cells. (E) We examine how infection within a LN impacts outcomes by inducing infection within two LNs for each host (i.e., seed them with viable Mtb at day 21); LN granuloma formation follows in those LNs (referred to as diseased). (C-E) were created in BioRender. Krupinsky, K. (2025) https://BioRender.com/m68b077.