Slowly replicating lytic viruses: pseudolysogenic persistence and within-host competition

TL;DR

This study explores how slowly replicating lytic viruses can persist within hosts through a balance of replication rates, and how competition among strains leads to coexistence rather than dominance, highlighting mechanisms of viral stability.

Contribution

It introduces a model showing the conditions for viral persistence and explains the coexistence of multiple viral strains with different replication rates within hosts.

Findings

Viruses can persist with a range of slow replication rates.

Stable replication rates enable viruses to avoid extinction.

Coexistence occurs when strains have varying replication rates.

Abstract

We study the population dynamics of lytic viruses which replicate slowly in dividing host cells within an organism or cell culture, and find a range of viral replication rates that allows viruses to persist, avoiding extinction of host cells or dilution of viruses at too rapid or too slow viral replication. For the within-host competition between multiple viral strains, a strain with a "stable" replication rate could outcompete another strain with a higher or lower replication rate, therefore natural selection of viruses stabilizes the viral persistence. However, when strains with higher and lower than the "stable" value replication rates are both present, competition between strains does not result in dominance of one strain, but in their coexistence.