Introductory Material

Question 1

Give a very basic description of a virus.

Answer 1

An acellular microorganism that requires another host cell to replicate. Obligate intracellular parasite.

Question 2

Give a very basic description of a virus.

Answer 2

An acellular microorganism that requires another host cell to replicate. Obligate intracellular parasite.

Question 3

What is the basic structure of a virus?

Answer 3

Viruses have a genome, a capsid, and may have an envelope.

Question 4

What is another name for a complete virus particle?

Answer 4

Virion

Question 5

What size pore is required to make a viral sterilization filter?

Answer 5

10 nm

Question 6

Define uncoating

Answer 6

Releasing a genome into a host cell

Question 7

What do viruses neat from host cells in terms of machinery for replication?

Answer 7

Enzymes
Energy
Ribosomes
Molecular building blocks

Question 8

How are the Baltimore classifications structured?

Answer 8

How each original genome type gets to mRNA.

Question 9

What is the ICTV? What do they provide?

Answer 9

International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses - they provide official nomenclature

Question 10

Define genetic economy.

Answer 10

When the genome’s size needs to be as small and efficient as possible so only what is necessary is incorporated and anything superfluous is left out to save space.

Question 11

What is viral polyprotein processing?

Answer 11

A major strategy used to produce many functional viral proteins from a single open reading frame.

Question 12

What are matrix proteins?

Answer 12

They bridge the nucleocapsid and the envelope.

Question 13

What kind of capsids can viruses have?

Answer 13

Icosahedral and helical

Also binal and complex

Question 14

How do capsids assemble?

Answer 14

Identical protein subunits assemble to make a protein shell which is symmetrical somehow.

Question 15

Define a nucleocapsid

Answer 15

Capside + genome

Question 16

What are viral core proteins?

Answer 16

Can help condense viral DNA with capsid

Question 17

What are scaffold proteins?

Answer 17

Used to help assemble virions not retained in viral particle

Question 18

What are matrix proteins?

Answer 18

They bridge the nucleocapsid and the envelope.

Question 19

What is included in the budding out from a host cell?

Answer 19

cell membrane
nuclear envelope
organelles from the host cell

Question 20

Describe transmembrane proteins.

Answer 20

3 functional domains: extracellular, transmembrane, and internal domains

Question 21

Name a virus famous for creating multiple non-infectious particles.

Answer 21

Hep B particles

Question 22

Describe the transmembrane domain of a transmembrane protein.

Answer 22

Anchor that holds a viral protein to the envelope.

Question 23

Describe the internal domain of a transmembrane protein.

Answer 23

determines the protein selection for the envelope

Question 24

What is a key concept in virology that is often overlooked?

Answer 24

Not all intact virions are infectious.

Question 25

Define how you could define the state of a virion.

Answer 25

Defective and non-infectious?
Immature?
Mature and infectious?
ISVP?
VLP?

Question 26

How many viral particles are created per virion?

Answer 26

The number of VLPs to virions is at least greater than 1.

Question 27

Name at least three ways of counting viruses.

Answer 27

TCID50
Plaque assay
HPLC
Hemagglutination assay
Q-PCR
ELISA
Flow cytometry
Electron microscopy

Question 28

What is considered to be the gold standard for virus counting? What problem can it encounter?

Answer 28

Electron microscopy. Does not allow for the potentially VLPs if they cannot be differentiated.