Diffusion Theory for the Infection Pathway of Virus in a Living Cell

Yuichi Itto

doi:10.2174/2210289201809010001

Abstract

Background: The infection pathway of virus in living cell is of interest from the viewpoint of the physics of diffusion. Objective: Here, recent developments about a diffusion theory for the infection pathway of an adeno-associated virus in cytoplasm of a living HeLa cell are reported. Theories and Results: Generalizing fractional kinetics successfully modeling anomalous diffusion, a theory for describing the infection pathway of the virus over the cytoplasm is presented. The statistical property of the fluctuations of the anomalous-diffusion exponent is also discussed based on a maximum-entropy-principle approach. In addition, an issue regarding the continuum limit of the entropy introduced in the approach is carefully examined. The theory is found to imply that the motion of the virus may obey a scaling law.

Highlights

Viruses and related phenomena are of great interest from the viewpoint of physics
It turns out to play a key role for proposing the statistical property of the fluctuations, i.e., the statistical distribution of the fluctuations over the cytoplasm, which is crucial in the theory
It is of extreme interest to further examine the infection pathway of the virus over the cytoplasm: if the scaling law in Eq (17) can experimentally be observed, the time-scale separation is expected to exist in the infection pathway

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Viruses and related phenomena are of great interest from the viewpoint of physics (see, for example, Refs. [1,2]). The purpose of the present article is to report recent developments about a diffusion theory for the infection pathway of an adeno-associated virus in cytoplasm of a living HeLa cell. It is discussed that the exponent characterizing the diffusion property of the virus fluctuates depending on localized areas of the cytoplasm. Is a certainly remarkable feature [4] that the exponent, α , in the case of anomalous diffusion fluctuates between 0.5 and 0.9, depending on localized areas of the cytoplasm. This is apparently different from traditional anomalous diffusion [6,7] widely discussed in the literature. There, nonspecific interactions, which are due to high macromolecular concentration, have been discussed for such a variation. (Later, we will briefly discuss a possible relevance of nonspecific interactions to the origin of anomalous diffusion of the virus.)

FRACTIONAL KINETICS AND ITS GENERALIZATION

SCALING LAW FOR THE MOTION OF THE VIRUS

CONCLUSION