News Releases & Research Results Are viruses active indoors or outdoors? - Elucidation of the strategy of hepatitis C virus infection in an integrated study of mathematics and experiments -

The results of research conducted by Ph.D. student Shoya Iwanami of the Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences and Associate Professor Shingo Iwami of the Graduate School of Science, Kyushu University and Senior Researcher Koichi Watashi of the Department of Virology II, National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

• A “strategy for the prosperity” of hepatitis C virus (HCV) was successfully elucidated.
• Specifically, analysis was performed based on experimental data obtained through infection experiments with two representative HCV strains using an equation that mathematically expresses viral life cycles. As revealed in the analysis, the ratios of viral particle release during life cycles showed a 2.7-fold difference between the two HCV strains. Additionally, the HCV strains were divided into two types, “indoor viruses” that stay inside the same host cells to replicate progeny viruses and “outdoor viruses” that take the risk of leaving host cells as particles to infect different cells for proliferation. Furthermore, the indoor and outdoor viruses showed nearly the maximum values for the indicators of proliferation and transmission tendencies, respectively.
• The results of this research project should facilitate the discovery of viral weaknesses and the establishment of therapies for controlling viral infection in the body.

This program was conducted with the support of the Japanese Initiative for Progress of Research on Infectious Disease for global Epidemic by AMED.

The results of this research project were published in the international academic journal PLOS Biology on July 31.

Kondo T., et al. Should a viral genome stay in the host cell or leave? A quantitative dynamics study of how hepatitis C virus deals with this dilemma PLOS Biology
DOI：10.1371/journal.pbio.3000562