A team of researchers from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences has unveiled a groundbreaking pattern in virus transmission through advanced synthetic biology techniques.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, delves into the movement behaviors of E. coli bacteria and the M13 bacteriophage that infects them.
Contrary to previous beliefs that animal migration accelerates the spread of viruses, the new research highlights that certain animals, such as monarch butterflies, actually experience a reduced probability of disease infection during long-distance migrations.
To uncover these underlying patterns, the researchers utilized E. coli as the host and M13 bacteriophage as the virus, creating a controlled laboratory system where interactions between the host and virus could be meticulously observed.
By manipulating the movement speed of bacterial populations and altering the virus's infection characteristics through synthetic biology, combined with mathematical modeling, the team discovered that faster directional movement leads to the swift discarding of infected bacteria by the moving group. This process ultimately results in a bacterial population composed entirely of healthy individuals.
“This research provides deeper insights into the patterns of infectious disease transmission,” said Fu Xiongfei of SIAT, the corresponding author of the paper. The findings pave the way for a better understanding of how movement dynamics can influence the spread and containment of infectious diseases.
Reference(s):
Chinese researchers discover new pattern in virus transmission
cgtn.com
