Week 2 Lecture - Host and Parasite Flashcards
Characteristics of a Host:
- Macroorganism, usually multicellular
- Phylogenetically a higher level
- Eukaryote normally, but could be prokaryote
Characteristics of a Parasite:
- Living on/in the host -> damage -> possibly disease
- Obtains necessities of life from the host
- No sharp distinction between normal and pathogenic, but parasitism has a unilateral benefit
Types of parasites, broadly:
- Non-living: unique proteins (prions), nucleic acids (viroid)
- Non-living/living?: virus
- Prokaryotes: bacteria
- Eukaryotes: microscopic fungi, protozoa, helmiths (worms which may be non-microscopic)
What is commensalism?
What is mutualism?
Commensalism is a relationship between a microorganism and host that is altogether neutral (no damage to each other)
Mutualism is a relationship that is beneficial for both the microorganism and the host
What is the ratio of host cells : microbe cell number?
1 host cell : 10 microbe cells
What percent of the human genome are human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) accountable for?
HERV’s have contributed ~ 8% of the human genome without any serious problems and even encoding for some vital functions (i.e. the placenta development is encoded by viral-origin DNA)
Which microorganisms are considered a normal part of the microbe flora? Which are NOT normal?
- Normal: bacteria, microscopic fungi
- Not normal: viruses, protozoa, helminths
What are some benefits to microorganisms for commensalism/mutualism?
And benefits for the host?
- Microorganism Benefits: shelter and food, colonisation on the tissues. Rarely, they will enter the tissue and cause disease
- Host Benefits: prevent colonization of harmful microbes, often producing antimicrobial compounds (e.g. lactic acid in the vagina). Also GI bacteria process/degrade food components, producing Vitamin K and B12
How many species of parasitic/pathogenic microorganisms are there?
>1400
What are 4 ways that parasites can damage humans?
(the answers are kind of stupid but directly from the slide)
- Entry/penetration form surface into tissues (invasivity)
- Passively enter through wounds (damaged tissue integrity)
- Actively via enzymes
- Multiplication/replication in tissue -> pathogenic effects
What is the difference between obligate, facultative, and opportunistic parasites?
- Obligate: always pathogenic, never found in normal flora
- Facultative: conditionally, based on risk factors, a parasite may be either part of the normal flora or pathogenic. they don’t need a host to live, so may also be free living organisms and not parasitic
- Opportunistic: members of the environment normally, not pathogenic at all for healthy people, but take advantage in disorders - especially immunosuppression
What are 3 risk factors for facultative pathogen infection?
- Physical/mental stress
- Acute diseases, wounds, burns
- Chronic debilitating conditions (like diabetes, alcoholism, nutritional defects, leukemia + immunosuppression, etc.)
What are some examples of infection that have iatrogenic origins?
These are caused by medical diagnosis and/or therapy
- Antibiotics and other drugs can cause changes in normal flora
- Surgery, especially oral surgery
- Prosthetics, catheters
What is a nosocomial infection?
An infection that results from time in a hospital or other health care facility. Infection could come from anyone, including patients, staff, or visitors
What are 4 viruses that replicate in immune cells, causing immunodeficiency?
- HHV-6 (human herpes virus)
- HHV-7
- HIV
- EBV (Epstein-Barr Virus aka HHV-4, infects B cells, causes mono)
What is the difference between pathogenicity and virulence?
-
Pathogenicity: ability of the whole population of a given microbe species to elicit disease in their hosts
- simpler def’n: “ability to cause disease”
- pathogenicity is determined by virulence factors
-
Virulence: ability to elicit a disease by a smaller population of the species.
- simpler def’n: “degree of damage caused by a pathogen”
What are the 4 Koch Postulates?
Criteria to identify the causative agent of a particular disease
- Microorganism/pathogen must be present in all cases of the disease
- Pathogen can be isolated from the disease host and grown in pure culture
- Pathogen from the pure culture must cause the disease when inoculated into a healthy, susceptible laboratory animal
- Pathogen must be reisolated from the new host and shown to be the same as the originally inoculated pathogen
What might increase or decrease virulence? What is it called when virulence is lost?
- Increasing virulence: mutations, GMO, bioterrorism
- Decreasing virulence: mutations, attenuation
- Microorganism loses virulence -> avirulent
How can virulence be measured?
- Measured by number of germs
- How many microbe(s) defined among standard circumstances induces pathological conditions = dose
- ID50 = infective dose inducing disease in 50% of hosts
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DL50 = lethal dose causing death in 50% of hosts
- can also be measured as DL90, DL100 etc
- TCID50 = tissue culture infecting dose - damaging 50% of cultures
What would be considered a small number of germs that -> disease and are thus highly virulent?
And as a large number of germs/low virulence?
- Small # of germs that are highly virulent: 1-102
- Large number of germs that have low virulence: >105
How would a bacterial endotoxin work to be poisonous to a host and what is a major example of one?
Because bacteria replicate and die quickly, their endotoxins are released into the host during bacterial infections.
Major example is LPS (liposaccharide) in Gram negative bacteria
What are some non-toxic virulence roles of the bacteria capsule?
- Protection - including the anti-phagocytic activity involving masking/hiding antigens
- Adhesion to host cells
- Antigen variations in one species - helping evade the immune system
What are 4 “non-toxic” (according to slide but they sound pretty toxic to me) extracellular enzymes secreted by bacteria that have an antiphagocytic effect?
(again might be a bit more than we need to know)
- Leukocidines - pore-forming chemicals that kill leukocytes, helping the bacteria evade the immune system
- Coagulase - reacts with prothrombin to make an active form that converts fibrinogen to fibrin. Apparently fibrin helps certain types of bacteria evade phagocytosis
- Hemolysins - by definition they lyse red blood cells, but some can also lyse WBC’s
- Proteases (pretty broad)