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Competitive exclusion during co-infection as a strategy to prevent the spread of a virus: A computational perspective

Inspired by the competition exclusion principle, this work aims at providing a computational framework to explore the theoretical feasibility of viral co-infection as a possible strategy to reduce the spread of a fatal strain in a population. We propose a stochastic-based model—called Co-Wish—to und...

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Autores principales: Vafadar, Safar, Shahdoust, Maryam, Kalirad, Ata, Zakeri, Pooya, Sadeghi, Mehdi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7904198/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33626106
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247200
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author Vafadar, Safar
Shahdoust, Maryam
Kalirad, Ata
Zakeri, Pooya
Sadeghi, Mehdi
author_facet Vafadar, Safar
Shahdoust, Maryam
Kalirad, Ata
Zakeri, Pooya
Sadeghi, Mehdi
author_sort Vafadar, Safar
collection PubMed
description Inspired by the competition exclusion principle, this work aims at providing a computational framework to explore the theoretical feasibility of viral co-infection as a possible strategy to reduce the spread of a fatal strain in a population. We propose a stochastic-based model—called Co-Wish—to understand how competition between two viruses over a shared niche can affect the spread of each virus in infected tissue. To demonstrate the co-infection of two viruses, we first simulate the characteristics of two virus growth processes separately. Then, we examine their interactions until one can dominate the other. We use Co-Wish to explore how the model varies as the parameters of each virus growth process change when two viruses infect the host simultaneously. We will also investigate the effect of the delayed initiation of each infection. Moreover, Co-Wish not only examines the co-infection at the cell level but also includes the innate immune response during viral infection. The results highlight that the waiting times in the five stages of the viral infection of a cell in the model—namely attachment, penetration, eclipse, replication, and release—play an essential role in the competition between the two viruses. While it could prove challenging to fully understand the therapeutic potentials of viral co-infection, we discuss that our theoretical framework hints at an intriguing research direction in applying co-infection dynamics in controlling any viral outbreak’s speed.
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spelling pubmed-79041982021-03-02 Competitive exclusion during co-infection as a strategy to prevent the spread of a virus: A computational perspective Vafadar, Safar Shahdoust, Maryam Kalirad, Ata Zakeri, Pooya Sadeghi, Mehdi PLoS One Research Article Inspired by the competition exclusion principle, this work aims at providing a computational framework to explore the theoretical feasibility of viral co-infection as a possible strategy to reduce the spread of a fatal strain in a population. We propose a stochastic-based model—called Co-Wish—to understand how competition between two viruses over a shared niche can affect the spread of each virus in infected tissue. To demonstrate the co-infection of two viruses, we first simulate the characteristics of two virus growth processes separately. Then, we examine their interactions until one can dominate the other. We use Co-Wish to explore how the model varies as the parameters of each virus growth process change when two viruses infect the host simultaneously. We will also investigate the effect of the delayed initiation of each infection. Moreover, Co-Wish not only examines the co-infection at the cell level but also includes the innate immune response during viral infection. The results highlight that the waiting times in the five stages of the viral infection of a cell in the model—namely attachment, penetration, eclipse, replication, and release—play an essential role in the competition between the two viruses. While it could prove challenging to fully understand the therapeutic potentials of viral co-infection, we discuss that our theoretical framework hints at an intriguing research direction in applying co-infection dynamics in controlling any viral outbreak’s speed. Public Library of Science 2021-02-24 /pmc/articles/PMC7904198/ /pubmed/33626106 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247200 Text en © 2021 Vafadar et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Vafadar, Safar
Shahdoust, Maryam
Kalirad, Ata
Zakeri, Pooya
Sadeghi, Mehdi
Competitive exclusion during co-infection as a strategy to prevent the spread of a virus: A computational perspective
title Competitive exclusion during co-infection as a strategy to prevent the spread of a virus: A computational perspective
title_full Competitive exclusion during co-infection as a strategy to prevent the spread of a virus: A computational perspective
title_fullStr Competitive exclusion during co-infection as a strategy to prevent the spread of a virus: A computational perspective
title_full_unstemmed Competitive exclusion during co-infection as a strategy to prevent the spread of a virus: A computational perspective
title_short Competitive exclusion during co-infection as a strategy to prevent the spread of a virus: A computational perspective
title_sort competitive exclusion during co-infection as a strategy to prevent the spread of a virus: a computational perspective
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7904198/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33626106
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247200
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