EEES2150 Lecture 2: University of Toledo EEES 2150-091 Gottgens Midterm 2 Notes
17 Nov 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Learning outcomes: recognize that viruses are non-living disease producing entities(obligate intracellular parasites) Illustrate some uses of viruses in biological research: describe the structure of a virus, review the reproductive cycles of a phage, recall horizontal and vertical transmission of viral disease in plants. Viral evolution: they seem to exist in a gray area between life and biological chemicals(borrowed life, cannot reproduce by themselves and cannot metabolize. Most likely when plants have been damaged(to allow entry for the virus: vertical transmission- plant inherits viral infection from the parent, viroids and prions, viroids-circular small rna molecules that infect plants. A single molecule can be an infectious agent that infects plants: prions- infectious proteins causing degenerative brain diseases in animals. Example: mad cow disease spread by eating infected food: alarming, prions act slowly with incubation periods on the order of decades(sources of infection are not identified until long after the first cases occur, prions are virtually indestructible.
