Microbiology and Immunology 2500A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Herpesviridae, Npc1, Reoviridae

• School: Western University
• Department: Microbiology and Immunology
• Course: Microbiology and Immunology 2500A/B
• Professor: Stephanie Kelly

Document Summary

Main objective: understand how viruses make it into a host cell. Other objectives: overview and concept; viral receptor attachment; host cell entry (enveloped versus non-enveloped viruses); nuclear viral entry. They must be stable when contacting host receptors and budding, while unstable inside the host to expose their genome. Viruses will make random electrostatic interactions between their own receptors and host cell membrane receptors when searching for the correct receptor to allow entry. These electrostatic interactions will not initiate the infectious cycle as the receptors do not match, hence is not a specific recognition event. Only the interaction between the virus and its appropriate receptor on a susceptible host will initiate the infectious cycle, allowing the obligate intracellular parasite to enter the host. Once in the host, the virus becomes unstable and release its genome to replicate more virions. Some viruses require two receptors to gain entry into the host cell through host cell recognition.