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Quantifying relative virulence: when μ max fails and AUC alone just is not enough
Author(s) -
Ruben Michael Ceballos,
Carson Len Stacy
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of general virology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 167
eISSN - 1465-2099
pISSN - 0022-1317
DOI - 10.1099/jgv.0.001515
Subject(s) - lytic cycle , virulence , biology , host (biology) , virology , virus , metric (unit) , genetics , operations management , economics , gene
A challenge in virology is quantifying relative virulence ( V R ) between two (or more) viruses that exhibit different replication dynamics in a given susceptible host. Host growth curve analysis is often used to mathematically characterize virus-host interactions and to quantify the magnitude of detriment to host due to viral infection. Quantifying V R using canonical parameters, like maximum specific growth rate ( μ max ), can fail to provide reliable information regarding virulence. Although area-under-the-curve (AUC) calculations are more robust, they are sensitive to limit selection. Using empirical data from Sulfolobus Spindle-shaped Virus (SSV) infections, we introduce a novel, simple metric that has proven to be more robust than existing methods for assessing V R . This metric ( I SC ) accurately aligns biological phenomena with quantified metrics to determine V R . It also addresses a gap in virology by permitting comparisons between different non-lytic virus infections or non-lytic versus lytic virus infections on a given host in single-virus/single-host infections.