BIOM20001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 42: Antibody, Immunosuppression, Prokaryote
Document Summary
Infectious disease greatest cause of lost years of life. Each disease normally caused by one single agent. Usually no co-factors. e. g. if you have cholera you"re infected with the vibrio cholera bacteria or influenza=influenza virus. Potential for unpredictable explosive global impact - pandemics. Pandemic = epidemic that spreads to involve more than one continent. Evolutionary advantage of causative agent over human host. Potential for treatment having multiplying effects on contacts. Curing one person helps the whole population as it prevents disease from spreading. First: smallpox - through immunisation & powerful surveyance; second: rindapest in animals; third [targetted]: polio; fourth [targetted]: measles. Classification of living things based on relatedness of rrna. Everything has some sort of ribosomes, all functioning in a broadly similar fashion. Chose rrna because all organisms must make proteins so there is a degree of conservation between ribosomes. So can see how far organisms have diverged based on ribosomes.
