Narrow Results

AUSTRALIA – Mosquito Parasite Could Control Dengue

CHINA – China has Twice the Global Average of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

CHINA – 80 000 Antibiotics Abuse-related Deaths Annually

CHINA – Bird Flu Found in Chicken from China

CHINA – China on Alert following Bird Flu Death

CHINA – Chinese Dairies to Compensate Tainted Milk Victims' Families

CHINA – New Insulin Resistance Tricks Found

CHINA – World's First Plant Chromosome Atlas

CHINA – Project Launched to Study Structure of Proteins

CHINA – Fake Diabetes Drug Linked to Two Deaths

CHINA – Birth Defects Rising in Polluted China

INDIA – India Culls Poultry in Darjeeling After Bird Flu

INDIA – India Introduces Second-Line Anti-retroviral Treatment in Eight States

INDIA – Indian Medical Tourism to Reach US$1.9 billion by 2015

INDIA – Canadian and Indian Ministers Sign Pact on Agriculture Cooperation

INDIA – 6000 year-old Rice Species Discovered in Meghalaya

INDIA – Genetics to Help Conserve Rare Bird Species

JAPAN – Coating the Protein Enhances Disease-fighting Capability

JAPAN – Scientists Isolate Genes that Made 1918 Flu Lethal

JAPAN – Researchers in Japan Develop All-round Flu Vaccine

PHILIPPINES – Ebola Reston Virus Found in Filipino Farm Worker

SINGAPORE – New Method to Create iPS Cells

SINGAPORE – Ray of Hope for Liver Cancer Sufferers

SINGAPORE – Bacteria Improve Energy and Cost Efficiency in Water Treatment

TAIWAN – Secrets of “Speciation” Gene Unravelled

TAIWAN – Initial Breakthrough in Poultry Vaccine Development

TAIWAN – Taiwan Gains Direct Access to WHO

VIETNAM – Doctors Report First Drug Hypersensitivity Syndrome

VIETNAM – Public Advised Serious Caution Against Bird Flu

NORTH AMERICA – Kids of Pregnant Drinking Mums will Like Booze

NORTH AMERICA – High Functional Diversity in Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Driven By Genetic Drift And Human Demography

NORTH AMERICA – Newly Discovered Tuberculosis Protein May Help Explain Bacterium's Resilience

NORTH AMERICA – U.S. Patent For Diagnostic Technology Awarded To URMC, Lighthouse Biosciences

EUROPE – Structure Mediating Spread of Antibiotic Resistance Discovered

EUROPE – New EU Pesticide Regulations Could Undermine Battle against Malaria

EUROPE – iPill – The Smart Drug Delivery that can “Call” the Doctor

EUROPE – What Drives Locusts to Swarm

Based on previous studies, empirical distribution of the bacterial burst size varies even in a population of isogenic bacteria. Since bacteriophage progenies increase linearly with time, it is the lysis time variation that results in the bacterial burst size variations.

Here, the burst size variation is computationally modeled by considering the lysis time decisions as a game. Each player in the game is a bacteriophage that has initially infected and lysed its host bacterium. Also, the payoff of each burst size strategy is the average number of bacteria that are solely infected by the bacteriophage progenies after lysis. For calculating the payoffs, a new version of ball and bin model with time dependent occupation probabilities (TDOP) is proposed.

We show that Nash equilibrium occurs for a range of mixed burst size strategies that are chosen and played by bacteriophages, stochastically. Moreover, it is concluded that the burst size variations arise from choosing mixed lysis strategies by each player. By choosing the lysis time and also the burst size stochastically, the released bacteriophage progenies infect a portion of host bacteria in environment and avoid extinction. The probability distribution of the mixed burst size strategies is also identified.