QLS Guest Seminar - Thursday, 16 January 11h00am

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

QLS Guest Seminar - Thursday, 16 January 11h00am

ICTP, Central Area, 2nd floor, SISSA Building, via Beirut 2

Speaker:  Fakhteh Ghanbarnejad - Sharif University of Technology (SUT), 
Tehran, Iran

Title: Interplay between competitive and cooperative interactions in a 
three-player pathogen system

Abstract:
In ecological systems, heterogeneous interactions between pathogens take 
place simultaneously. This occurs, for instance, when two pathogens 
cooperate, while at the same time multiple strains of these pathogens 
co-circulate and compete. Notable examples include the cooperation of 
HIV with antibiotic-resistant and susceptible strains of tuberculosis, 
or some respiratory infections with Streptococcus pneumoniae strains.
Models focusing on competition or cooperation separately fail to 
describe how these concurrent interactions shape
the epidemiology of such diseases. We studied this problem considering 
two cooperating pathogens, where one pathogen is further structured in 
two strains. The spreading follows a susceptible-infected-susceptible 
process and the strains differ in transmissibility and extent of 
cooperation with the other pathogen. We combined a mean-field
stability analysis with stochastic simulations on networks considering 
both well-mixed and structured populations. We observed the emergence of 
a complex phase diagram, where the conditions for the less 
transmissible, but more cooperative strain to dominate are non-trivial, 
e.g. non-monotonic boundaries and bistability. Coupled with community 
structure, the presence of the cooperative pathogen enables the 
co-existence between strains by breaking the spatial symmetry and 
dynamically creating different ecological niches.
These results shed light on ecological mechanisms that may impact the 
epidemiology of diseases of public health concern.

Web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/9273/

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