Lecture #33 - Evolution and medicine (HIV)

Question 1

1. What kinda virus is HIV?
2. Infection occurs through?
3. What does it do?

Answer 1

1. It’s a retrovirus that is a lentivirus

=any of a group of retroviruses producing illnesses characterized by a delay in the onset of symptoms after infection.

2. Infection occurs through bodily fluids
3. Virus infects and causes the failure of the immune system

Question 2

1. Clinically, what happens to infected individuals? (after a variable length of time….)
2. Untreated AIDs leads to death within?
3. Are there cures or vaccines? What is there then?

Answer 2

1. Infected individuals (after a variable length of time) progress to AIDs, leading to infections with bacteria and fungi
2. About a year
3. Nope but there are antiviral drugs which delay (or even stop) progression to AIDs but won’t cure

Question 3

1. Is the genome of HIV (which is a virus) inserted into the human genome of infected cells?
2. How can you isolate the viral genome or pieces of viral genome?
3. What do you find when you do that?

Answer 3

1. Yessss
2. You can use PCR
3. That graph and “variations in viral sequences BETWEEN patients and also WITHIN patients

Question 4

What do phylogenic trees do?

What can you use to reconstruct a phylogenic tree?

Answer 4

Trace the relationships between species (can be DNA or protein sequences)

Using computer programmes, you can reconstruct a tree from an alignment of DNA sequence