Related papers: Temperate and chronic virus competition leads to l…
We study the population dynamics of lytic viruses which replicate slowly in dividing host cells within an organism or cell culture, and find a range of viral replication rates that allows viruses to persist, avoiding extinction of host…
This paper explores a number of questions regarding optimal strategies evolved by viruses upon entry into a vertebrate host. The infected cell life cycle consists of a non-productively infected stage in which it is producing virions but not…
Upon infection of their bacterial hosts temperate phages must chose between lysogenic and lytic developmental strategies. Here we apply the game-theoretic bet-hedging strategy introduced by Kelly to derive the optimal lysogenic fraction of…
Starting with stochastic rate equations for the fundamental interactions between microbes and their viruses, we derive a mean field theory for the population dynamics of microbe-virus systems, including the effects of lysogeny. In the…
Bacteriophages are viruses infecting bacteria and archaea. Many phage species cause infections which lead to the certain death of the infected prokaryotic host cell and the release of a large batch of phage progeny, yet they have been able…
As antibiotic resistance grows more frequent for common bacterial infections, alternative treatment strategies such as phage therapy have become more widely studied in the medical field. While many studies have explored the efficacy of…
A class of stochastic vector-borne infectious disease models is derived and studied. The class type is determined by a general nonlinear incidence rate of the disease. The disease spreads in a highly random environment with variability from…
RNA viruses exist in large intra-host populations which display great genotypic and phenotypic diversity. We analyze a model of viral competition between two different viral strains infecting a constantly replenished cell pool, in which we…
Bacteria and their viruses ("bacteriophages") coexist in natural environments forming complex infection networks. Recent empirical findings suggest that phage-bacteria infection networks often possess a nested structure such that there is a…
This paper analyzes a simplified model of viral infection and evolution using the 'grand canonical ensemble' and formalisms from statistical mechanics and thermodynamics to enumerate all possible viruses and to derive thermodynamic…
RNA viruses exist as genetically diverse populations displaying different phenotypes, including diverse degrees of virulence. The evolution of virulence in viral populations is, however, poorly understood. Based on the experimental…
Despite being similar in structure, functioning, and size viral pathogens enjoy very different mostly well-defined ways of life. They occupy their hosts for a few days (influenza), for a few weeks (measles), or even lifelong (HCV), which…
Cell competition in multicellular organisms has been shown to play a critical role during the development of organisms, cancer progression, and in the establishment and maintenance of tissue homeostasis. Various mechanisms of cell…
The paper studies multi-competitive continuous-time epidemic processes in the presence of a shared resource. We consider the setting where multiple viruses are simultaneously prevalent in the population, and the spread occurs due to not…
Marine viruses shape the structure of the microbial community. They are, thus, a key determinant of the most important biogeochemical cycles in the planet. Therefore, a correct description of the ecological and evolutionary behavior of…
The temporal dynamics of social interactions were shown to influence the spread of disease. Here, we model the conditions of progression and competition for several viral strains, exploring various levels of cross-immunity over temporal…
Pathogen-mediated competition, through which an invasive species carrying and transmitting a pathogen can be a superior competitor to a more vulnerable resident species, is one of the principle driving forces influencing biodiversity in…
In many viruses, hundreds of proteins assemble an outer shell (capsid) around the viral nucleic acid to form an infectious virion. How the assembly process selects the viral genome amidst a vast excess of diverse cellular nucleic acids is…
A stochastic model for the growth of a virus in a cell population is introduced. The virus has two ways of spreading: either by allowing its host cell to live on and duplicate, or else by multiplying in large numbers within the host cell…
The annual occurrence of many infectious diseases remains a constant burden to public health systems. The seasonal patterns in respiratory disease incidence observed in temperate regions have been attributed to the impact of environmental…