BMS1062 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Burkholderia Pseudomallei, Agrobacterium Tumefaciens, Enterobacteria Phage T4
Document Summary
Lecture 5: bacterial plasmids and transfer of genetic material. There are multiple human pathogens that vary in size. Prions, viruses, bacteria (prokaryotes), parasites (unicellular eukaryotes), and parasites (metazoans). Viruses are considered parasites, often called the ultimate" parasite. One of the exceptions to this is the genome of pandoravirus, which is larger than the genome of even some parasitic eukaryotes, such as microsporidia. We don"t know the origin story of viruses, though there are two potential possibilities. One is that viruses may have evolved before life, hence why they do not contain many genes. Another theory is that there may have been some cells that lost more and more proteins, essentially creating viruses. Some examples of viruses and the number of genes they contain: phage ms2 contains 4 genes, smallpox contains 300 genes. Viruses have a large diversity in the organisation of their genomes.