Biology 1001A Lecture Notes - List Of Epidemics, Smallpox, Reverse Transcriptase
9 Jul 2013
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Document Summary
Viruses would not go on the tree of life, because they are not living. Viruses can"t reproduce until they find a host cell (they are obligate cellular parasites) Hard to design a drug to kill virus, because it would affect the host cell. Central dogma of molecular biology: dna replicates itself, gets transcribed to rna which gets translated to protein. They do an extra step, reverse transcription (highly error-prone) Virus makes reverse transcriptase and does not have proofreading _____ Virion (viral particle) enters host cell, then reverse transcriptase to make viral dna. Transcription, translation, new virions assemble and bud off or lyse out. Azt mimics thymidine and inhibits reverse transcriptase, but eventually stops working, because hiv mutates to resist azt molecules. Evolution of drug resistance: mutations produce virions that vary in drug resistance. This resistance is passed from parents" to "offspring. " also, not all virions reproduce.
