Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA.
Department of Physics & Astronomy, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA.
Math Biosci. 2024 Mar;369:109144. doi: 10.1016/j.mbs.2024.109144. Epub 2024 Jan 13.
SARS-CoV-2 has the ability to form large multi-nucleated cells known as syncytia. Little is known about how syncytia affect the dynamics of the infection or severity of the disease. In this manuscript, we extend a mathematical model of cell-cell fusion assays to estimate both the syncytia formation rate and the average duration of the fusion phase for five strains of SARS-CoV-2. We find that the original Wuhan strain has the slowest rate of syncytia formation (6.4×10/h), but takes only 4.0 h to complete the fusion process, while the Alpha strain has the fastest rate of syncytia formation (0.36 /h), but takes 7.6 h to complete the fusion process. The Beta strain also has a fairly fast syncytia formation rate (9.7×10/h), and takes the longest to complete fusion (8.4 h). The D614G strain has a fairly slow syncytia formation rate (2.8×10/h), but completes fusion in 4.0 h. Finally, the Delta strain is in the middle with a syncytia formation rate of 3.2×10/h and a fusing time of 6.1 h. We note that for these SARS-CoV-2 strains, there appears to be a tradeoff between the ease of forming syncytia and the speed at which they complete the fusion process.
SARS-CoV-2 能够形成称为合胞体的多核巨细胞。关于合胞体如何影响感染的动力学或疾病的严重程度，人们知之甚少。在本文中，我们扩展了细胞融合分析的数学模型，以估计五种 SARS-CoV-2 毒株的合胞体形成率和融合阶段的平均持续时间。我们发现，原始的武汉株具有最慢的合胞体形成速度（6.4×10/h），但完成融合过程仅需 4.0 h，而 Alpha 株具有最快的合胞体形成速度（0.36/h），但完成融合过程需要 7.6 h。Beta 株的合胞体形成速度也相当快（9.7×10/h），完成融合的时间最长（8.4 h）。D614G 株的合胞体形成速度相当慢（2.8×10/h），但在 4.0 h 内完成融合。最后，Delta 株处于中间位置，合胞体形成率为 3.2×10/h，融合时间为 6.1 h。我们注意到，对于这些 SARS-CoV-2 株，形成合胞体的容易程度和它们完成融合过程的速度之间似乎存在权衡。
