iTHEMS Biology Seminar by Prof. Catherine Beauchemin on October 14, 2021

Defective interfering virus particles (DIPs) are viruses that are defective in a very specific way that allows them to out-compete standard, non-defective virus. It is difficult to count DIPs because they can look too similar to standard virus. So instead, people are counting them based on their effect on suppressing the standard virus population. In this talk, C. Beauchemin explained the basic biology of virus replication, what are DIPs, and how they compete with standard virus. She presented her group's mathematical model (ordinary differential equation) that describes co-infection competition with DIPs and standard virus. She also showed applications of the mathematical model to show how experiments to count DIPs can give incorrect results, and proposed some solutions.