Multiscale viral evolutionary dynamics
Ruian Ke (North Carolina State University)
The process of viral infection, transmission and evolution spans several scales of biological organization. At the population scale, viral pathogens transmit through contacts between individuals. At the host scale, viral particles enter a host, infect from cell to cell and from tissue to tissue, and then find a way to get out of the host to cause further infection. At the cellular scale, viral genome hijacks host machineries to replicate, which usually involves complicated genetic regulations. Due to their extremely high mutation rates and population size, viruses exist as a genetically diverse population, which is under dynamic selection pressures from ecological, environmental and immune factors across scales. Therefore, virus evolution and spread is a truly a non-linear multi-scale problem. Often times, solutions at a larger scale require mechanistic understandings and actions at lower scales. Here I will present some of our recent works on the understanding of multiscale viral evolutionary dynamics, including a cross-scale theory on the factors shaping novel pathogen emergence, theoretical works on naturally occurring as well as genetically-engineered defective viruses, and a phylodynamic analysis to understand mechanisms of HCV within-host resistance.
