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To show the effect of hyper-mutation on the maturation of
affi nity in C-ImmSim as well as in IMMSIM, one can use a “hole
in the repertoire” by artifi cially preventing the bone marrow
from generating high affi nity to the antigen. As a consequence,
hyper-mutation becomes the only mechanism for the immune
system to enhance the affi nity to the antigen. Mutations in
B-cell receptors can either decrease or increase the affi nity to
the antigen. A less-frequent increase confers upon the cell an
evolutionary advantage that eventually produces a shift of the
overall population affi nity toward a maturation of affi nity.
3.13 Immune Activation
In theory ...