Modeling multiple infection of cells by viruses: Challenges and insights
Abstract
The multiple infection of cells with several copies of a given virus has been demonstrated in experimental systems, and has been subject to previous mathematical modeling approaches. Such models, especially those based on ordinary differential equations, can be characterized by difficulties and pitfalls. One such difficulty arises from what we refer to as multiple infection cascades. That is, such models subdivide the infected cell population into sub-populations that are carry i viruses, and each sub-population can in principle always be further infected to contain i + 1 viruses. In order to study the model with numerical simulations, the infection cascade needs to be cut artificially, and this can influence the results. This is shown here in the context of the simplest setting that involves a single, homogeneous virus population. If the viral replication rate is sufficiently fast, then most infected cells will accumulate in the last member of the infection cascade, leading to incorrect numerical results. This can be observed even with relatively long infection cascades, and in this case computational costs associated with a sufficiently long infection cascade can render this approach impractical. We subsequently examine a mor...Continue Reading
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