Multiple possible patterns can emerge from virus-immune coevolution

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic and deterministic model of virus-immune coevolution, revealing that large populations can lead to unstable infection pulses and persistent endemic infection patterns.

Contribution

It presents a new modeling framework for virus-immune coevolution and demonstrates how population size influences the emergence of stable or fluctuating infection patterns.

Findings

Pulse solutions can become unstable in large populations.

Large populations tend to develop extended endemic infection patterns.

Endemic patterns reach a fluctuating steady-state at high infection levels.

Abstract

The adaptive immune system engages in an arms race with evolving viruses, trying to generate new responses to viral strains that continually move away from the set of variants that have already elicited a functional immune response. In previous work, it has been argued that this dynamical process can lead to a propagating pulse of ever-changing viral population and concomitant immune response. Here, we introduce a new stochastic model of viral-host coevolution and a deterministic approximation thereof with which to study these dynamics. We show that there is indeed a possible pulse solution, but for a large host population size, the pulse becomes unstable to the generation of new infections in its wake, leading to an extended endemic infection pattern. This time-dependent endemic pattern eventually reaches a fluctuating steady-state when the infected population size reaches a large enough fraction of the total number of hosts.