The Anti-Social Microbe Flashcards
Describe viruses as a pathological infectious agent
- ssRNA, dsRNA, ssDNA, dsDNA
- can integrate into host genome
Describe bacteria as a pathological infectious agent
wide variety
Describe protists as a pathological infectious agent
Wide variety
Describe multi-called eukarya as a pathological infectious agent
Helminths are visible to the human eye, but behave like microbes
Describe host-derived pathological infectious agents
- infectious cancers (host cancer cells that have become infectious)
- prions
Give examples of viruses
- Phage lambda
- Influenza
- SARS-CoV-2
- Ebola
Give examples of bacterial pathogens
- Mycobacterium tuberculosis
- Yersinia pestis
Give examples of protist pathogens
- Trypanosoma brucei gambiense
- Plasmodium falciparum
Give examples of multi-celled Eukarya pathogens
- Schistosoma mansoni
- Trichuris trichiura
Give examples of host-derived infectious cancers
- Devil facial tumour disease
- canine transmissible venereal tumour
Give examples of prions
- Kuru (humans)
- CJD and vCJD (humans)
- Scrapie (sheep)
- BSE (cattle)
What are prions?
Misfolded host-derived proteins
Infection is not necessary
A pathological process (it is also required by commensals and mutualistic symbionts)
What is pathology caused by?
Pathogen transmission from infection source to host
Describe the actions of a lytic bacteriophage as an infectious agent
- Environmental phage absorbs to bacterial host
- Phage injects DNA and it circularises- remains separate from host DNA
- Replicate DNA at host’s expense
- Genes are transcribed and translated by host machinery to produce phage proteins
- Virions assembled
- Virions released into environment by bacterial lysis
Give an example of a type of bacteriophage
Lytic bacteriophage
What is a virion?
Phage particle
What does bacterial lysis cause?
Cell death
What is it called when virions are released into the environment by bacterial lysis
A pathology
When is the phage life cycle complete?
When another bacterium is infected
Describe a lytic phage
Bacterial cells are lysed and the phage progeny infect new hosts
Give an example of a lytic phage
Bacteriophage T4 that infects E. Coli
What is a lysogenic phage?
- phage genome integrates into host DNA
- some persist as episome
- some lyse cell
Episome
Phage DNA inside a bacterial body that can replicate independently of the host, and also in association with a chromosome with which it becomes integrated
Lysogenic phage aka
Temperate phage
Give an example of a lysogenic phage
E. Coli phage lambda
Describe the lysogenic phage life cycle
- Phage infects cell
- Phage DNA integrates into host genome
- Cell divides - prophage DNA passed on to daughter cells
- Under stress, phage DNA excised from bacterial chromosome, and enters lytic cycle
What is the most abundant biological entity on the planet?
- bacteriophage
- 10^30 (more than stars)
- 200Mt carbon in marine viruses
Many microbial infectious agents cannot
- survive in an environmental reservoir
- they require direct host-to-host transmission
- pathogen resides permanently in host population
When the infection is transitory, in what way do we regard the host?
Susceptible, or infected
Not all pathologies are
Beneficial to the pathogen - some arise from failed commensal relationships
How is continued transmission insured
One infection must give rise to at least one other infection
R = 1
Describe Chlamydia trachomatis
- an obligate intracellular pathogen of humans
- relatively small genome (1Mbp, ~1000 genes)
- evidence for genome reduction
- isolates of very low diversity
- high rates of recombination among strains
- not subject to genome decay
What causes high rate of recombination among Chlamydia strains
Mixed infections
Define horizontal transmission
Passing of infectious agent among different individuals
Describe vertical transmission
Passing of infections from parent to offspring
List the routes by which vertical transmission can occur
- intracellular
- transplacentally
- via milk
- during birth
Give an example of pathogen that is vertically transferred during birth
HIV