Viruses Flashcards
What is the viral genome nucleic acid enclosed in?
Capsid
What are the protein subunits which make up the capsid called?
Capsomers
What is a cylinder of hexagonal proteins called?
sheet - helical symmetry
What shape of capsid is made up of pentagon capsomers?
Icosahedral symmetry - sphere
What shape is made when 5 trimer proteins come together?
Pentamer
What is a lipid envelope?
Lipid bilayer derived from budding on all helical viruses and many icosahedral viruses
What are peplomers?
Membrane anchored glycoproteins which viruses use to attach to cells
How do viruses bind to cells?
Receptor ligand binding
or non specific ligand
What is a lytic infection?
Acute viral infection causing cell death
release infects thousands more cells
generalised multisystem disease
What is latent infection?
Viral infection persists within a cell and doesnt cause cell death
can go dormant
viruses released without killing the cell
What is a persistent infection?
cells produce new virus proteins and continually shed virus
doesnt go dormant
What is an example of a latent infection?
Herpes virus
What are released in response to a viral infection?
Interferons
pro inflammatory cytokines
chemokines
What do interferons do?
Cause cells to heighten antiviral defences: Blocks protein synthesis Increases MHC expression Activates antigen presenting cells Causes fever
What stimulates interferons?
PAMPS
How do viruses alter cell function?
They cause shutdown of the host cell protein synthesis
What are viruses grown in?
Embryonated eggs
cell culture flask
plaque assay
What are the stages of viral infection?
Attachment phase
Eclipse phase
Release
Cell lysis
What happens in the attachment phase?
There is no free virus in the liquid, its all attached to the cells
What happens in the eclipse phase?
There is no virus detected in the liquid or in the cells
due to uncoating of the virus particle to release the nucleic acid
What do you need to do to get a positive sense RNA?
Copy a negative sense DNA
Then cap and tail it
How do single stranded DNA make mRNA?
Need to be duplicated with enzymes and then copied
What type of RNA is incapable of being translated directly?
negative sense RNA
also double stranded RNA uses the negative sense strand so cant be translated directly
How is negative sense RNA copied into positive sense?
Using RNA polymerase