BIOL240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Picornavirus, Smallpox, Oncolytic Virus
Document Summary
Viral diseases have plagued humans since before we even knew what viruses were. Began as a science in the late 1800"s: e. g. smallpox in egypt, infectious tobacco mosaic virus isolated in filtered, bacteria-free fluid, dimitri ivanovski (1892) Walter reed and colleagues (1901: coined the term plague , showed that yellow fever was a virus transmitted by mosquitos. Genome typically a few thousand to 200,000 nucleotides long. Megavirus chilensis (dsdna virus of amoeba: genome over 1. 2 megabase pairs. Mimivirus (dsdna virus of amoeba: up to 400nm in diameter, 1. 2 megabase pair genome. Pandoravirus (2013; dsdna virus of amoeba: 2. 5 megabase genome, 1 micron in diameter. Single or double-stranded dna or rna (linear or circular) Protein shell (capsid) around genome: composed of many capsomere proteins, capsid and genome together = nucleocapsid. Possible envelope (cell-derived membrane around capsid: capsids: often exhibit either heical or icosahedral shapes. Can also take on irregular or complex shapes.
