Figure 1

Numerical simulation showing how a gene affects the dynamics of HIV-1 infection, composed of uninfected cells ( x ), infected cells ( y ), and virus particles ( v ), as described by a basic model (1) in Appendix 1. The simulated gene has three genotypes AA, Aa and aa, each displaying a different time trajectory for each of these three cell types. Based on these differences, one can test and determine how the gene affects the emerging properties of viral dynamic system, such as average life-times of different cell types and the points of three variables (indicated by triangles) when the system converges to an equilibrium state. The parameter values are (λ, d, β, a, k, u) = (10, 0.01, 0.005, 0.5, 10, 3), (12, 0.01, 0.005, 0.6, 8, 3), and (12, 0.008, 0.005, 0.55, 8, 4) for genotypes AA, Aa and aa, respectively.