Bifurcation in a generic model of intracellular viral kinetics

The key steps of intracellular virion reproduction include viral genome replication, mRNA synthesis and degradation, protein synthesis and degradation, capsid assembly and virion release from a cell. Our analysis, incorporating these steps (with no deterioration of the cell machinery), indicates that asymptotically depending on the values of the model parameters the viral kinetics either reach a steady state or are out of control due to an exponential growth of the virion population. In the latter case, the cell is expected to rapidly die or the virion growth should be limited by other steps.