Models of RNA virus evolution and their roles in vaccine design

Ojosnegros, Samuel; Beerenwinkel, Niko

The experimental and theoretical results indicate that less virulent strains are more efficient in outcompeting the virulent ones in coinfected cells. Therefore, the fitness of variants of different virulence is density-dependent [168] . The cell competition model offers an explanation of several previous observations of suppression of high fitness mutants in dissimilar viral systems [169] [170] [171] [172] . This density-dependent selection due to varying efficiency of viral replication alone or in coinfection is reminiscent of the concept of a competition-colonization trade-off in ecology [173] . Here, virulent viral variants play the role of colonizers and viruses efficient within coinfected cells are competitors. The attenuating effect of competitor-colonizer competition appears even more pronounced if many viruses from a broad spectrum of virulence are considered.