Diffusion theory for the infection pathway of virus in a living cell

Abstract

The infection pathway of virus in living cell is of interest from the viewpoint of the physics of diffusion. Here, recent developments about a diffusion theory for the infection pathway of an adeno-associated virus in cytoplasm of a living HeLa cell are reported. Generalizing fractional kinetics successfully modeling anomalous diffusion, a theory for describing the infection pathway of the virus over the cytoplasm is presented. The statistical property of the fluctuations of the anomalous-diffusion exponent is also discussed based on a maximum-entropy-principle approach. In addition, an issue regarding the continuum limit of the entropy introduced in the approach is carefully examined. The theory is found to imply that the motion of the virus may obey a scaling law.