Related papers: Modeling microevolution in a changing environment:…
As pathogens spread in a population of hosts, immunity is built up and the pool of susceptible individuals is depleted. This generates selective pressure, to which many human RNA viruses, such as influenza virus or SARS-CoV-2, respond with…
Between pandemics, the influenza virus exhibits periods of incremental evolution via a process known as antigenic drift. This process gives rise to a sequence of strains of the pathogen that are continuously replaced by newer strains,…
Biological systems are modular, and this modularity evolves over time and in different environments. A number of observations have been made of increased modularity in biological systems under increased environmental pressure. We here…
We study an abstract model for the co-evolution between mutating viruses and the adaptive immune system. In sequence space, these two populations are localized around transiently dominant strains. Delocalization or error thresholds exhibit…
We investigate the dynamics of a simple epidemiological model for the invasion by a pathogen strain of a population where another strain circulates. We assume that reinfection by the same strain is possible but occurs at a reduced rate due…
Pathogens drive changes in host immune systems that in turn exert pressure for pathogens to evolve. Quantifying and understanding this constant coevolutionary process has clear practical global health implications. Yet its relatively easier…
Eigen's quasi-species model describes viruses as ensembles of different mutants of a high fitness "master" genotype. Mutants are assumed to have lower fitness than the master type, yet they coexist with it forming the quasi-species. When…
We study the adaptation dynamics of an initially maladapted population evolving via the elementary processes of mutation and selection. The evolution occurs on rugged fitness landscapes which are defined on the multi-dimensional genotypic…
The coexistence of different viral strains (quasispecies) within the same host are nowadays observed for a growing number of viruses, most notably HIV, Marburg and Ebola, but the conditions for the formation and survival of new strains have…
Asymptomatic infection has gained notoriety as an important feature of infectious disease dynamics. Despite increasing attention, there have been few rigorous examinations of how asymptomatic transmission influences pathogen evolution. In…
Based on a recent model of evolving viruses competing with an adapting immune system [1], we study the conditions under which a viral quasispecies can maximize its growth rate. The range of mutation rates that allows viruses to thrive is…
How will the novel coronavirus evolve? I study a simple epidemiological model, in which mutations may change the properties of the virus and its associated disease stochastically and antigenic drifts allow new variants to partially evade…
In this paper we study intra-host viral adaptation by antigenic cooperation - a mechanism of immune escape that serves as an alternative to the standard mechanism of escape by continuous genomic diversification and allows to explain a…
Cooperation and competition between pathogens can alter the amount of individuals affected by a co-infection. Nonetheless, the evolution of the pathogens' behavior has been overlooked. Here, we consider a co-evolutionary model where the…
We introduce and analyze a within-host dynamical model of the coevolution between rapidly mutating pathogens and the adaptive immune response. Pathogen mutation and a homeostatic constraint on lymphocytes both play a role in allowing the…
Co-evolution of two coupled quasispecies is studied, motivated by the competition between viral evolution and adapting immune response. In this co-adaptive model, besides the classical error catastrophe for high virus mutation rates, a…
Antigenic escape constitutes the main mechanism allowing rapidly evolving viruses to achieve endemicity. Beyond granting immune escape, empirical evidence also suggests that mutations of viruses might increase their inter-host…
Biological evolution in a sequence space with random fitnesses is studied within Eigen's quasispecies model. A strong selection limit is employed, in which the population resides at a single sequence at all times. Evolutionary trajectories…
Migration between different habitats is ubiquitous among biological populations. In this Letter, we study a simple quasispecies model for evolution in two different habitats, with different fitness landscapes, coupled through one-way…
In this letter we study the full semi-conservative treatment of a model for the co-evolution of a virus and an adaptive immune system. Regions of viability are calculated for both conservatively and semi-conservatively replicating viruses…