Mathematical Modeling of Cystic Fibrosis Ecology

Cystic fibrosis is an inherited chronic disease that affects the lungs, digestive system and even circulatory system of CF patients. Understanding the CF patient’s lung and airway as an ecosystem is a novel and powerful point of view. There are many different microbes in CF lungs that no one has ever cultured and the chronically colonized CF airways represent a complex and diverse ecosystem. Once we understand the CF lung in terms of its community and evolutionary ecology, we can then better understand the disease progression and the influence of different treatments on CF patients. A complete mathematical model of CF would need equations that follow the concentrations of all different kinds of bacterial and phage species in each compartment. This type of encyclopedic model is impossible to build in one go, therefore we can start with simple models that only look at one phage-host interaction. As part of our modeling efforts, we expect to figure out which variables are the most important using the metagenomic data currently being prepared by San Diego State University’s Phage group.