QLS Seminar - Tuesday, 17 July at 14h00

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

QUANTITATIVE LIFE SCIENCES  SEMINAR

Tuesday, 17 July 2018 at 14:00,
ICTP, Central Area, 2nd floor, old SISSA building, via Beirut 2


Speaker: Fakhteh Ghanbarnejad - ITP, TU Berlin

Title:  Disease ecology: How to compete in a multi-pathogen system?

Abstract:
In an ecological system, pathogens often need to share their host with
other pathogens, and therefore compete for the resources with different
spreading strategies. Both cooperative and competitive interactions in
bacterial infections have been observed.  Here we first review recent
theoretical studies addressed these two mechanisms separately and then
study their combination and discuss about non-trivial dynamical effects
can be expected to arise. Thus we study two strains competing with each
other for host resources in the presence of a third pathogen cooperating
with both of them. We first treat dynamics in a homogeneously mixed
population by means of mean-field theory and stability analysis. We
study the impact of cooperation on the outcome of the two-pathogen
competition, which can be quantified in terms of dominance of one
competing pathogen or the co-circulation of both of them. We show that
the presence of a third cooperating pathogen can alter the outcome of
competition as it may favor the more cooperative pathogen over the more
infectious one. We then consider more complex contact structures among
hosts and perform computer simulations to study the evolution of the
diseases.

Indico web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/8628/

Everyone interested is most welcome to attend!

-- 
Erica Sarnataro
Group Secretary
Quantitative Life Sciences
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste,  Italy
Tel. +39-040-2240623
www.ictp.it/research/qls.aspx
e-mail: qls at ictp.it