Viruses generally replicate themselves within infected cells and increase by becoming progeny particles and infecting new cells.In other words, the virus has two strategies: "withdraw inside and safely replicate offspring in the same cell" or "take a risk as a particle and go out to infect and multiply in another cell". It is considered.

 This time, the research group of Kyushu University, through joint research with the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, has hepatitis C virus (HCV) with individuality like "indoor virus" and "outdoor virus", and has different prosperity strategies. It was clarified that they are alive by using them properly.

 Until now, there is no practical equation that describes the intracellular and extracellular virus life cycle in a unified manner, and the virus's prosperity strategy of replicating the virus or releasing it extracellularly as a new virus is "quantified". There was no way.On the other hand, this research group conducted an infection experiment using two representative HCV strains as an example, and analyzed the virus life cycle using an equation mathematically expressed based on the obtained experimental data.

 As a result, the ratio of virus particle release in the life cycle is 2 times higher between the two HCV strains, the former is the index value indicating "easiness to increase", and the latter is "easiness to propagate". It was found that the values ​​of the indicated indicators were close to the maximum value of each indicator.In other words, among infected cells, the virus uses two prosperity strategies, such as "indoor" and "outdoor".

 The two prosperity strategies found here may be common to other persistently infected viruses.Understanding the characteristics of viral infections is expected to lead to the establishment of treatments to control viral infections in the body.

Paper information:[PLOS Biology] Should a viral genome stay in the host cell or leave? A quantitative dynamics study of how hepatitis C virus deals with this dilemma

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