HIV viral docking: model predictions for bond number and trajectory

Viruses are nano-scale pathogenic particles. Understanding viral attachment is important to understand infectivity, disease transmission, and virus propagation throughout the host. A new simulation technique has been developed to study viral docking behavior - Brownian adhesive dynamics (BRAD). BRAD couples Brownian motion algorithms with adhesive dynamic models, and incorporates the effect of virus/cell geometry - an improvement over previous models. The method is extendable to any virus/cell system as well as nanoparticle adhesion systems. Current studies have focused on the HIV/CD4 cell system. Comparison of BRAD simulation predictions with those of previous models of viral docking has shown differences in steady state bond number and bond trajectory. This indicates that geometry of the system plays a significant role in the bonding behavior of viruses. Thus, it is shown that the equivalent site hypothesis is suspect.