Slowly Replicating Lytic Viruses: Pseudolysogenic Persistence and Within-Host Competition

Abstract

We study the population dynamics of lytic viruses which replicate slowly in dividing host cells within an organism or cell culture, and find a range of viral replication rates that allows viruses to persist, avoiding extinction of host cells or dilution of viruses at too rapid or too slow viral replication. For the within-host competition between viral strains with different replication rates, a strain with a "stable" replication rate in the persistence range could outcompete another strain. However, when strains with higher and lower than the stable value replication rates are both present, competition between strains does not result in the dominance of one strain, but in their coexistence.