Spatial Decision-Making in B Cell Evolution

The germinal center (GC) is a microenvironment where B cells collectively evolve their antibody specificity through iterative cycles of proliferation, mutation, and selection. Beyond biochemical signaling, the GC's spatial organization—its compartmental layout, density gradients, and motility patterns—appears to encode key design principles for efficient immune learning. In this work, we investigate how spatial structure shapes collective decision-making and emergent dynamics within B cell populations. Through agent-based modeling and phylogenetic reconstruction techniques, we identify how feedback, resource competition, and spatial heterogeneity influence the exploration–exploitation balance underlying affinity maturation. We aim to uncover how the architecture of the GC supports robust and adaptive information processing in unseen environments.