Stochastic Transport and Assembly of Intracellular HIV-1 Gag Proteins: Modeling and Numerical Simulations

The group-specific antigen (Gag) protein is encoded by human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), which causes the Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). A better understanding of the mechanisms of trafficking and assembly of the HIV-1 Gag proteins inside infected host cells will be very helpful for developing new drugs for HIV treatment. In this talk, we will present a mathematical model for HIV-1 Gag protein trafficking that accounts for both active transport on microtubules and diffusion inside cytoplasm. The convection-diffusion equation can be efficiently solved by characteristic finite element methods. Our in silico results agree principally with the in vitro experimental data for several cell lines. We shall also discuss math models for Gag multimerization inside cytoplasm and on cell membrane. The mechanism for kinesin-based viral egress will be examined to illustrate the stochastic features of protein trafficking.

This is a joint work with Chaoping Chen, Roberto Munoz-Alicea, Simon Tavener at ColoState and Qing Nie at UC Irvine.