Time-delayed model of immune response in plants

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new mathematical model of plant immune response that incorporates post-transcriptional gene silencing and explicit time delays, providing insights into plant recovery, resistance, and chronic infection dynamics.

Contribution

The paper develops a biologically accurate model of plant immune response with novel inclusion of PTGS dynamics and time delays, analyzed through stability and numerical simulations.

Findings

Identification of parameter regions for recovery and resistance

Demonstration of possible chronic infection scenarios

Insights into the effects of delays on immune response stability

Abstract

In the studies of plant infections, the plant immune response is known to play an essential role. In this paper we derive and analyse a new mathematical model of plant immune response with particular account for post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS). Besides biologically accurate representation of the PTGS dynamics, the model explicitly includes two time delays to represent the maturation time of the growing plant tissue and the non-instantaneous nature of the PTGS. Through analytical and numerical analysis of stability of the steady states of the model we identify parameter regions associated with recovery and resistant phenotypes, as well as possible chronic infections. Dynamics of the system in these regimes is illustrated by numerical simulations of the model.