Related papers: Multiple possible patterns can emerge from virus-i…
We study the interplay of population growth and evolutionary dynamics using a stochastic model based on birth and death events. In contrast to the common assumption of an independent population size, evolution can be strongly affected by…
Transmission models for infectious diseases are typically formulated in terms of dynamics between individuals or groups with processes such as disease progression or recovery for each individual captured phenomenologically, without…
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…
The immune response to a pathogen has two basic features. The first is the expansion of a few pathogen-specific cells to form a population large enough to control the pathogen. The second is the process of differentiation of cells from an…
One strategy for winning a coevolutionary struggle is to evolve rapidly. Most of the literature on host-pathogen coevolution focuses on this phenomenon, and looks for consequent evidence of coevolutionary arms races. An alternative…
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,…
Frequency dependent selection and demographic fluctuations play important roles in evolutionary and ecological processes. Under frequency dependent selection, the average fitness of the population may increase or decrease based on…
Horizontal gene transfer consists in exchanging genetic materials between microorganisms during their lives. This is a major mechanism of bacterial evolution and is believed to be of main importance in antibiotics resistance. We consider a…
This paper presents a stochastic model motivated by the study of a virus-like evolving population with different mutation rates. This is a continuous time birth-death model: the birth processes are mutually-exciting Hawkes processes and the…
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mechanism for the interplay of deterministic and stochastic models for contagious diseases. Deterministic models for contagious diseases are prone to predict global stability. Small natural birth…
One strategy for winning a coevolutionary struggle is to evolve rapidly. Most of the literature on host-pathogen coevolution focuses on this phenomenon, and looks for consequent evidence of coevolutionary arms races. An alternative…
We study contact epidemic models for the spread of infective diseases in finite populations. The size dependence enters in the infection rate. The dynamics of such models is then analyzed within the deterministic approximation, as well as…
Oncolytic virotherapy, utilizing genetically modified viruses to combat cancer and trigger anti-cancer immune responses, has garnered significant attention in recent years. In our previous work arXiv:2305.12386, we developed a stochastic…
We develop a new structured compartmental model for the coevolutionary dynamics between susceptible and infectious individuals in heterogeneous SI epidemiological systems. In this model, the susceptible compartment is structured by a…
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…
We consider the dynamics of a virus spreading through a population that produces a mutant strain with the ability to infect individuals that were infected with the established strain. Temporary cross-immunity is included using a time delay,…
We develop a stochastic framework for viral population dynamics at the cellular level that explicitly incorporates the replication cycle with random stage durations. The model is formulated as a structured birth-death process coupled with a…
The seasonal human influenza virus undergoes rapid evolution, leading to significant changes in circulating viral strains from year to year. These changes are typically driven by adaptive mutations, particularly in the antigenic epitopes,…
The dynamics of a population undergoing selection is a central topic in evolutionary biology. This question is particularly intriguing in the case where selective forces act in opposing directions at two population scales. For example, a…
We consider an exponentially growing population of cells undergoing mutations and ask about the effect of reproductive fluctuations (genetic drift) on its long-term evolution. We combine first step analysis with the stochastic dynamics of a…