Quantification of Ebola virus replication kinetics in vitro
Abstract
Mathematical modelling has successfully been used to provide quantitative descriptions of many viral infections, but for the Ebola virus, which requires biosafety level 4 facilities for experimentation, modelling can play a crucial role. Ebola virus modelling efforts have primarily focused onin vivovirus kinetics, e.g., in animal models, to aid the development of antivirals and vaccines. But, thus far, these studies have not yielded a detailed specification of the infection cycle, which could provide a foundational description of the virus kinetics and thus a deeper understanding of their clinical manifestation. Here, we obtain a diverse experimental data set of the Ebola virus infectionin vitro, and then make use of Bayesian inference methods to fully identify parameters in a mathematical model of the infection. Our results provide insights into the distribution of time an infected cell spends in the eclipse phase (the period between infection and the start of virus production), as well as the rate at which infectious virions lose infectivity. We suggest how these results can be used in future models to describe co-infection with defective interfering particles, which are an emerging alternative therapeutic.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Nov 02, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008375
Entities
People
- Alan S. Perelson
- Benjamin P. Holder
- Carmen Molina-París
- Catherine Beauchemin
- Cl4 Virology Team
- Diane Williamson
- Grant D. Lythe
- Isabel García-Dorival
- John Barr
- Jonathan Carruthers
- Julian Hiscox
- Laura Liao
- M López-García
- Simon A Weller
- Sophie J. Smither
- Thomas R Laws
Organizations
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
- National Institutes of Health