Understanding the effect of defective, interfering influenza virus

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, I will explain the basic biology of virus replication, what are DIPs, and how they compete with standard virus. I will present our mathematical model (ordinary differential equation) that describes co-infection competition with DIPs and standard virus. I will use the mathematical model to show how experiments to count DIPs can give incorrect results, and I will propose some solutions.