  The immune system can be thought as a complex network of different
interacting elements. A cellular automaton, defined in shape-space, was
recently shown to exhibit self-regulation and complex behavior and is,
therefore, a good candidate to model the immune system. Using this model to
simulate a real immune system we find good agreement with recent experiments on
mice. The model exhibits the experimentally observed refractory behavior of the
immune system under multiple antigen presentations as well as loss of its
plasticity caused by aging.
