Related papers: Eco-evolutionary dynamics of adapting pathogens an…
Risk-driven behavior provides a feedback mechanism through which individuals both shape and are collectively affected by an epidemic. We introduce a general and flexible compartmental model to study the effect of heterogeneity in 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.…
We study how the interplay between the memory immune response and pathogen mutation affects epidemic dynamics in two related models. The first explicitly models pathogen mutation and individual memory immune responses, with contacted…
The evolution of the adaptive immune system is characterized by changes in the relative abundances of the B- and T-cell clones that make up its repertoires. To fully capture this evolution, we need to describe the complex dynamics of the…
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…
Many pathogens spread primarily via direct contact between infected and susceptible hosts. Thus, the patterns of contacts or contact network of a population fundamentally shapes the course of epidemics. While there is a robust and growing…
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…
We study a susceptible-vaccinated--infected--recovered (SVIR) epidemic-spreading model with diversity of infection rate of the individuals. By means of analytical arguments as well as extensive computer simulations, we demonstrate that the…
Mutation rate is a key determinant of the pace as well as outcome of evolution, and variability in this rate has been shown in different scenarios to play a key role in evolutionary adaptation and resistance evolution under stress caused by…
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…
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…
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…
The theory of life history evolution provides a powerful framework to understand the evolutionary dynamics of pathogens in both epidemic and endemic situations. This framework, however, relies on the assumption that pathogen populations are…
Mechanisms of immunity, and of the host-pathogen interactions in general are among the most fundamental problems of medicine, ecology, and evolution studies. Here, we present a microscopic, protein-level, sequence-based model of immune…
The large-scale evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been marked by rapid turnover of genetic clades. New variants show intrinsic changes, notably increased transmissibility, as well as antigenic changes that reduce the cross-immunity…
Time varying susceptibility of host at individual level due to waning and boosting immunity is known to induce rich long-term behavior of disease transmission dynamics. Meanwhile, the impact of the time varying heterogeneity of host…
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…
During an epidemic outbreak, individuals often modify their behavior in response to global prevalence cues, using spatially mediated adaptations such as reduced mobility or transmission range. In this work, we investigate the impact of…
The host immune response can often efficiently suppress a virus infection, which may lead to selection for immune-resistant viral variants within the host. For example, during HIV infection, an array of CTL immune response populations…
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…