抗原浮動と抗原スイッチ : 逃げ続ける病原体の戦略

概要

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Following infection to a host, some pathogens repeatedly alter their antigen expression to escape the immune defense (antigenic drift/switching). Assuming that most mutations are deleterious but a minor fraction of which can alter the antigenic property of the pathogen, I examine the evolutionarily stable mutation rate, μ ESS, of pathogens which maximizes the stationary pathogen density in a host. The model reveals that: (1) If the mutation rate is higher than a threshold μ c, pathogens cannot maintain themselves because too much progenies are lost by lethal mutations. (2) If the mutaiton rate lies between zero and μ c, the system converges to a traveling wave of antigen variants with a constant wave speed. (3) The μ ESS is unexpectedly high: more than 0.25 per genome per replication even if most mutations are lethal. I also examine the optimal schedule of pathogen growth in a host.
日本生物物理学会の論文
1990-07-25