HIV

Question 1

What does HIV look like/ consist of?

Answer 1

Question 2

What is HIV?

Answer 2

A virus that affects the human immune system and eventually leads to AIDS

Question 3

What is AIDS

Answer 3

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome. AIDS is a condition where the immune system deteriorates and eventually fails. This makes someone with AIDS more vulnerable to other opportunistic infections like pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Question 4

What does HIV do?

Answer 4

• HIV infects and eventually kills helpers T cells, which act as the host cells for the virus.
• Without the helper T cells the immune sister is unable to respond effectively.
• People infected with HIV develop AIDS when the helper T cell numbers reach a critically low level.
• During the initial infection period, HIV replicates rapidly in the helper T cell and the infected person may develop flu like symptoms.
• After this period replication drops to a lower level ( the latency period). During this period the virus remains dormant in cells and a person will not have any symptoms - can be as long as 10 years

Question 5

What is the process of HIV replication?

Answer 5

1. Attachment protein binds to receptor on the host helper T cell
2. Capsid is released into the cell where it uncoats and releases the RNA into the cells cytoplasm
3. Reverse transcriptase is used to make a complementary strand of DNA from the viral RNA template
4. From this, double stranded DNA is made and inserted into the human DNA
5. Host cell makes the viral proteins and viral RNA. New viruses are made which bud off from the cell