Figure 3

Sensitivity of parameter estimates on target cell depletion, determined by our novel model. For varying values of surviving target cell fraction (0.1%–20%), noiseless artificial datasets were generated, and fitted by our novel models and the simple exponential model to calculate (A) the death rate of infected cells, (B) viral replication rate, (C) the basic reproduction number, and (D) the exponential growth rate. The parameters are those used in Figure 2; only the infection rate β was altered to adjust the target cell depletion. When the other parameters were altered, similar results were obtained (data not shown). The blue, green and orange symbols plot the indices estimated by the RQS, PWT and PWR models, respectively. The black dotted lines depict the true parameter values.