WEEK 3: MOLECULAR VIROLOGY AND INFECTION Flashcards
(118 cards)
Are viruses ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT on at least some cellular factors and on cellular metabolic energy?
- YES!
What general terms are viruses known as?
- Obligate intracellular parasites
What are the two phases in a viruses life cycle?
- A VIRION
2. INFECTED CELL
What are virions?
- A SINGLE infectious particle –> what we think of when we say viruses
What are virions inert carriers of ?
- Nucleic acid payload
Which phase of the life cycle do virions participate in?
- The extracellular phase which is a spore
Can virions perform replication or metabolism alone?
- NO!
What process do viruses regulate?
- C, N and P fixation (global cycles)
- They ‘drive’ global cycles
Can a latent virus become active again at another time?
- YES!
Is the virome a major part of the microbiome?
- YES!
Are the vast majority of DNA sequences in human blood viral?
- YES!
- Viral sequences present in ALL tissues
Do ALL viruses make you sick?
- NO
What are 3 examples of q’good’ viruses?
- Polydnaviruses –> Survival of wasp egg in insect host
- Retroviruses –> mammals–> evolution of placenta
- Parvoviruses–> aphids–> needed for development of WINGS
What are 4 viruses that are useful for us?
- Oncolytic virotherapy
- Viral gene therapy
- Reverse transcriptase
- Phage therapy
What does Oncolytic virotherapy involve?
- Viruses with propensity to target/replicate within tumour cells –> Parvivirus
What does viral gene therapy involve?
- Gene therapy using an adenovirus vector
What does reverse transcriptase do and how is it useful?
- Revolutionised molecular biology
- Can generate cDNA from RNA –> useful for PCR, cloning, Sequencing, genomics
What does Phage therapy involve?
- Targeting bacterial diseases and destroying them
e. g. Destruction of MDR bacteria
What are the ‘Historic’ (not used anymore) properties that can classify a microbe as a virus?
- Very small
- But now there are giant viruses so we don’t use it anymore
Do viruses grow when placed in broth?
- NO! THEY DO NOT GROW!!
What is the eclipse period defined as?
- NO new virus present in host cells (immediately when injected, there will be a period of ‘nothing’ happening)
What is the burst size defined as?
- Large number of new viruses produced per infected cell
“Viruses do not grow and divide like bacteria, but are _________, assembled from _____________ and released.”
“Viruses do not grow and divide like bacteria, but are MOLECULAR NANOMACHINES assembled from PREBUILD NEWLY SYNTHESIZED COMPONENTS and released.”
What happens when an extracellular inert particle enters the cell?
- Components dissociate
- Eclipse phase occurs –> NO VIRION detectable
- After some time, protein components made, genome is REPLICATED
- Virions SELF ASSEMBLE from newly synthesized components