Monte Carlo Simulation on Growth of Antibody-Antigen Complexes: the Role of Unequal Reactivity

Growth of Antibody-Antigen complexes in a multivalent Antibody-Antigen system is studied by the Monte Carlo simulation method. The validity of the algorithm is first demonstrated for the case of the equal reactivity, then the simulation is presented for the case of unequal reactivity. It is shown that the influence of the unequal reactivity on the critical point, size distribution and the weight-average binding degree is significant. Especially, the gelation regions for the cases of unequal reactivity are studied, which can provide some useful clues for the immunological experiments.