Huge progeny production during the transient of a quasi-species model of viral infection, reproduction and mutation

DOI10.1016/J.MCM.2010.11.055zbMATH Open1235.92036OpenAlexW2001276345MaRDI QIDQ409770FDOQ409770

Authors: José A. Cuesta 

Publication date: 15 April 2012

Published in: Mathematical and Computer Modelling (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Eigen's quasi-species model describes viruses as ensembles of different mutants of a high fitness "master" genotype. Mutants are assumed to have lower fitness than the master type, yet they coexist with it forming the quasi-species. When the mutation rate is sufficiently high, the master type no longer survives and gets replaced by a wide range of mutant types, thus destroying the quasi-species. It is the so-called "error catastrophe". But natural selection acts on phenotypes, not genotypes, and huge amounts of genotypes yield the same phenotype. An important consequence of this is the appearance of beneficial mutations which increase the fitness of mutants. A model has been recently proposed to describe quasi-species in the presence of beneficial mutations. This model lacks the error catastrophe of Eigen's model and predicts a steady state in which the viral population grows exponentially. Extinction can only occur if the infectivity of the quasi-species is so low that this exponential is negative. In this work I investigate the transient of this model when infection is started from a small amount of low fitness virions. I prove that, beyond an initial regime where viral population decreases (and can go extinct), the growth of the population is super-exponential. Hence this population quickly becomes so huge that selection due to lack of host cells to be infected begins to act before the steady state is reached. This result suggests that viral infection may widespread before the virus has developed its optimal form.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.2079

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zbMATH Keywords

evolutionpopulation dynamicsreplicator-mutator

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Medical applications (general) (92C50) Medical epidemiology (92C60) Problems related to evolution (92D15) Dynamical systems in biology (37N25)

Cites Work

• Analytic combinatorics
• Non-negative matrices and Markov chains.
• Dynamical Processes on Complex Networks
• Branching processes in biology
• Cluster approximations for epidemic processes: a systematic description of correlations beyond the pair level
• Optimal Allocation of Public Goods: A Solution to the "Free Rider" Problem

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• Optimal viral production
• Coinfection and superinfection in RNA virus populations: A selection--mutation model
• A trade-off between neutrality and adaptability limits the optimization of viral quasispecies
• The impact of host-cell dynamics on the fixation probability for lytic viruses
• A branching process for virus survival
• Studying viral populations with tools from quantum spin chains
• Stochastic modeling and simulation of viral evolution
• A linear algebra model for quasispecies
• Error catastrophe for viruses infecting cells: analysis of the phase transition in terms of error classes
• Virus replication as a phenotypic version of polynucleotide evolution

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