Related papers: Endogenous viral mutations, evolutionary selection…
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…
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…
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…
Antigenic variation is the main immune escape mechanism for RNA viruses like influenza or SARS-CoV-2. While high mutation rates promote antigenic escape, they also induce large mutational loads and reduced fitness. It remains unclear how…
Viruses like influenza have long coevolved with host immune systems, gradually shaping the evolutionary trajectory of these pathogens. Host immune systems develop immunity against circulating strains, which in turn avoid extinction by…
Chronic viral infections can persist in an infected person for decades. From the perspective of the virus, a single infection can span thousands of generations, leading to a highly diverse population of viruses with its own complex…
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…
The emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States has forced federal and local governments to implement containment measures. Moreover, the severity of the situation has sparked engagement by both the research and…
Several pathogens use evolvability as a survival strategy against acquired immunity of the host. Despite their high variability in time, some of them exhibit quite low variability within the population at any given time, a somehow…
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…
Viruses evolve in the background of host immune systems that exert selective pressure and drive viral evolutionary trajectories. This interaction leads to different evolutionary patterns in antigenic space. Examples observed in nature…
Multipartite viruses replicate through a puzzling evolutionary strategy. Their genome is segmented into two or more parts, and encapsidated in separate particles that appear to propagate independently. Completing the replication cycle,…
The SIR model is the cornerstone model for mathematical epidemiology, explaining key epidemic features such as the second-order transition between disease-free and epidemic states, the initial exponential growth of outbreaks or the…
The increase in the connectivity between hosts in recent times has facilitated the emergence of more aggressive mutant viral strains, making their containment and eradication significantly more challenging compared to the original variants.…
The evolution of many microbes and pathogens, including circulating viruses such as seasonal influenza, is driven by immune pressure from the host population. In turn, the immune systems of infected populations get updated, chasing viruses…
We consider the class of SIS epidemic models in which a large population of individuals chooses whether to adopt protection or to remain unprotected as the epidemic evolves. For a susceptible individual, adopting protection reduces the…
CoV2019 has evolved to be much more dangerous than CoV2003. Experiments suggest that structural rearrangements dramatically enhance CoV2019 activity. We identify a new first stage of infection that precedes structural rearrangements by…
Viruses display striking diversity in structure, transmission mode, immune interaction, and evolutionary behavior. Despite this diversity, viral strategies are not unconstrained. Here we present a unifying framework that treats viral…
At the end of 2020, policy responses to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak have been shaken by the emergence of virus variants. The emergence of these more contagious, more severe, or even vaccine-resistant strains have challenged worldwide policy…
Epidemic spreading over populations networks has been an important subject of research for several decades, and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most epidemic outbreaks are likely to create multiple mutations during their spreading…