title: Viral epidemics in a cell culture: novel high resolution data and their interpretation by a percolation theory based model.
abstract: Because of its relevance to everyday life, the spreading of viral infections has been of central interest in a variety of scientific communities involved in fighting, preventing and theoretically interpreting epidemic processes. Recent large scale observations have resulted in major discoveries concerning the overall features of the spreading process in systems with highly mobile susceptible units, but virtually no data are available about observations of infection spreading for a very large number of immobile units. Here we present the first detailed quantitative documentation of percolation-type viral epidemics in a highly reproducible in vitro system consisting of tens of thousands of virtually motionless cells. We use a confluent astroglial monolayer in a Petri dish and induce productive infection in a limited number of cells with a genetically modified herpesvirus strain. This approach allows extreme high resolution tracking of the spatio-temporal development of the epidemic. We show that a simple model is capable of reproducing the basic features of our observations, i.e., the observed behaviour is likely to be applicable to many different kinds of systems. Statistical physics inspired approaches to our data, such as fractal dimension of the infected clusters as well as their size distribution, seem to fit into a percolation theory based interpretation. We suggest that our observations may be used to model epidemics in more complex systems, which are difficult to study in isolation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Physics, Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: Balázs
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gönci
authors.forename: Valéria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Németh
authors.forename: Emeric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Balogh
authors.forename: Bálint
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Szabó
authors.forename: Ádám
authors.initials: Á
authors.lastname: Dénes
authors.forename: Zsuzsanna
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Környei
authors.forename: Tamás
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vicsek
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001253:Astrocytes / Q000166:cytology / Q000821:virology; D002478:Cells, Cultured / Q000821:virology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003470:Culture Media / Q000378:metabolism; D058872:Epidemics; D017709:Fractals; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D011558:Herpesvirus 1, Suid / Q000235:genetics; D007150:Immunohistochemistry / Q000379:methods; D007700:Kinetics; D051379:Mice; D015233:Models, Statistical; D016011:Normal Distribution; D012984:Software; D014777:Virus Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology*
chemical_list: D003470:Culture Media; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins