Aller

Title: Mathematical Modelling of Host-Virus Metabolic Interactions

Sean Aller

Abstract: Viruses can be described as metabolic products of their host cell. Mathematical models of virus-infected cells can be created and analyzed using linear optimization techniques. Two such techniques are flux-balance- and flux-variability-analysis (FBA, FVA). These techniques can be used to analyze the flow of metabolites through an integrated host-virus metabolic model and simulate the metabolic changes during viral infection. The virus is modelled as a biomass generating pseudo-reaction, which is optimized against the host’s own pseudo-reaction. This approach can in theory be extended to any host-virus pair of interest. A range of optimality situations can be explored, and the significance of environmental, genetic and metabolic conditions on both host and virus metabolism. The underlying biological significance of this analysis can be further investigated to identify pathways for experimental validation and common mechanisms of pathogenesis that have potential for antiviral treatments.