Antigenic waves of virus-immune coevolution

The evolution of many microbes and pathogens, including circulating viruses such as seasonal influenza, is driven by immune pressure from the host population. In turn, the immune systems of infected populations get updated, chasing viruses even farther away. Quantitatively understanding how these dy...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 118; no. 27
Main Authors: Marchi, Jacopo, Lässig, Michael, Walczak, Aleksandra M, Mora, Thierry
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 06.07.2021
Subjects:
Antigens, Viral - immunology
Diffusion
Evolution, Molecular
Immunity
Models, Biological
Molecular Dynamics Simulation
Stochastic Processes
viral evolution
host–pathogen dynamics
coevolution
fitness wave
ISSN:1091-6490, 1091-6490
Online Access:Get more information
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Summary:The evolution of many microbes and pathogens, including circulating viruses such as seasonal influenza, is driven by immune pressure from the host population. In turn, the immune systems of infected populations get updated, chasing viruses even farther away. Quantitatively understanding how these dynamics result in observed patterns of rapid pathogen and immune adaptation is instrumental to epidemiological and evolutionary forecasting. Here we present a mathematical theory of coevolution between immune systems and viruses in a finite-dimensional antigenic space, which describes the cross-reactivity of viral strains and immune systems primed by previous infections. We show the emergence of an antigenic wave that is pushed forward and canalized by cross-reactivity. We obtain analytical results for shape, speed, and angular diffusion of the wave. In particular, we show that viral-immune coevolution generates an emergent timescale, the persistence time of the wave's direction in antigenic space, which can be much longer than the coalescence time of the viral population. We compare these dynamics to the observed antigenic turnover of influenza strains, and we discuss how the dimensionality of antigenic space impacts the predictability of the evolutionary dynamics. Our results provide a concrete and tractable framework to describe pathogen-host coevolution.
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ISSN:1091-6490
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.2103398118