Viruses Flashcards
What is the purpose of the envelope?
The envelope is a structure found In many viruses which surrounds the capsid it is made up of a lipid bilayer and often times helps the virus bond to a cell
What is a capsid and what is it’s function?
The capsid is a protective protein shell which houses the viruses genetic material. The main functions of the capsid are to protect the viral genetic material from cellular digestion, it has proteins on its surface that allow bonding to host cells. The capsid also contains proteins to allow the virus to break through the host cell membrane
What does nucleic acid do?
Nucleic acid functions basically the same way in viruses as it does in multi-celled organisms. But the molecules housing genetic material can range from DNA to RNA with many different stranding patterns
What is a tegument?
Also known as the viral matrix the tegument lines the space between the viral envelope and capsid generally teguments are responsible for housing proteins helping viruses evade the immune response as helping with viral cell invasion
What are prions
Prions are mis folded proteins which misfold more proteins and degrade cells brain matter etc.
Explain the difference between sense and anti sense DNA
The sense strand acts as a coding strand which actually codes for genetic material antisense strand is non coding and acts as a strand running anti to the sense strand
Baltimore classification 1
This viral group is comprised of viruses with double stranded DNA and simply hijacks host cells for replication purposes
how are viruses important in the evolution of cellular genomes?
viruses are important in the evolution of cellular genomes because when viruses integrate their DNA into a host cell many times the viral DNA gets passed on in humans viral DNA accounts for 1/10 of the genome.
why are we unable to develop as many antivirals as we are antibiotics?
since viruses use the host cell for growth and replication it is hard to create drugs which target a virus but not the host cell.
what are cloning vectors?
cloning vectors refers to when a virus has its genetic material removed and artificial genes are inserted so when the virus infects a cell the cell starts producing the product of the new gene
what are bacteriophages?
viruses that infect bacteria
what is host range?
host range refers to the groups of species that can be infected by one strain of virus
what are plaques and how are they important in counting viral cells in a culture?
plaques are clear spots in a lawn of cells where the presence of a virus has caused the lysing of the nearby cells
what are reading frames
the reading frame refers to what portion of genetic materials read and translated into subsequent proteins because viruses have very small genomes multiple reading frames are used on a very small amount of DNA making up a genome of less than ten genes
are large viral genomes possible?
large viral genomes are possible and usually can code for a couple of hundred genes
what are viroids?
viroids are like viruses in that they contain small amounts of genetic material which infects and replicates in plants but they lack things like a capsid and other protective layers seen in viruses
what are ribozymes?
ribozymes are pieces of RNA that are capable of catalyzing reactions. in medicine they may be useful because they can cleave specific RNA sequences involved in cancer
virus capids take two main shapes what are they
icosahedral or filamentous
what does an icosahedral capsid look like
an icosahedral capsid has 20 sides and has twenty identical triangular faces with three unique types of axis a five fold a three fold and a two fold
how can we observe viruses?
viral particles can be observed by transmission electron microscopy but to see the capsid you need to use digital reconstruction via cryo-em