Hopf bifurcation direction of a delayed bacteria-immunity system with quorum sensing mechanism (Q984527)

This paper deals with a model that describes the so-called bacterial quorum sensing mechanism in the competition between bacteria and the immune system. The model modifies a previous version (9) and consists of a nonlinear system of ordinary differential equations, that introduces a constant delay to describe the time in which bacteria receive signal molecules and then combat immune cells. The local stability of the equilibria of the model is analyzed, and taking the delay as a parameter, a sufficient condition under which Hopf bifurcation occurs is obtained. The stability and the direction of Hopf bifurcation as well as the period of bifurcating solutions on the center manifold are determined. The length of the delay that preserves the stability of the positive equilibrium is estimated. The paper ends with some numerical simulations to illustrate the qualitative results.