Life cycle synchronization is a viral drug resistance mechanism
Fig 4
Competition between viral strains with different life cycle times when infected cells can die before maturing.
Viral dynamics were simulated under periodic antiviral therapy given by the simple on-off model with a period (T) of 2 days, a drug efficacy of 85% (f = 0.85), and an immature cell death rate between 0 and dy (mature infected cell death rate). The infection level (heat map color) is measured as the concentration of mature infected cells (y) once a steady-state has been reached. Each simulation included a collection of viral strains with the full range of maturation times shown, all with the same death rate of immature infected cells. Each strain is labeled by its average maturation time 1/m (maturation rate of nm for each stage). (A) Results with n = 1 maturation step. (B) Results with n = 10 maturation steps. Data shown for 110 different immature cell death rates between dw = 0.001 and dw = 1, for competitions between 501 different strains with average maturation times between 1 and 6 days.