Seven challenges in modeling pathogen dynamics within-host and across scales
Julia R. Gog,
Lorenzo Pellis,
James L.N. Wood,
Angela R. McLean,
Nimalan Arinaminpathy,
James O. Lloyd-Smith
Affiliations
Julia R. Gog
Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
Lorenzo Pellis
Warwick Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research Centre (WIDER) and Warwick Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom
James L.N. Wood
Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
Angela R. McLean
Department of Zoology, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom
Nimalan Arinaminpathy
Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
James O. Lloyd-Smith
Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
The population dynamics of infectious disease is a mature field in terms of theory and to some extent, application. However for microparasites, the theory and application of models of the dynamics within a single infected host is still an open field. Further, connecting across the scales – from cellular to host level, to population level – has potential to vastly improve our understanding of pathogen dynamics and evolution. Here, we highlight seven challenges in the following areas: transmission bottlenecks, heterogeneity within host, dynamic fitness landscapes within hosts, making use of next-generation sequencing data, capturing superinfection and when and how to model more than two scales.
