Virology: Structure and Taxonomy Flashcards
What is a virion?
The ineffective version of a virus, contains a core of RNA
Where does the lipid envelope of a virus come from?
The lipid envelope is taken from the cell that they infect
What are some properties of virus’s?
- Simple/ Cannot Survive outside of cells
- Sometimes has a stolen membrane as an envelope
- they carry the minimum amount needed to survive
What is the purpose of non-structural proteins?
They supress innate and adaptive immunity
What is the baltimore classification system
Classifying viruses based on the genetic contents and replication strategies of viruses
Name three important zoonotic viruses
- HIV/ AIDS
- Influenza
- Measles
What is the basic structure of a virus?
Genome made up of DNA/RNA, surroundeed by structural proteins
What are non-structural proteins?
any proteins that are not used to make up the virion itself
When are the non-structural proteins synthesised?
during replication
What are the two functions of non-structural proteins?
- supress innate immunity
- supress adaptive immunity
What are three different ways you may classify a virus?
- Nucleic acid genome
- Shared physical properties
- replication strategy
What are the seven virus classifications from the baltimore system?
- dsDNA viruses
- ssDNA viruses
- dsRNA viruses
- (+) sense ssRNA viruses (same direction as mRNA
= codes directly for protein) - (-) sense ssRNA viruses
- RNA reverse transcribing viruses
- DNA reverse transcribing viruses
What does positive sense mean?
Similiar to the mRNA and therefore can be coded immediately by the host cell
What does negative sense mean?
it is complementary to the mRNA and therefore must become positive-sense before translation
