BIOB51H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Mutation Rate, Zidovudine, Azide
17 Jun 2012
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Chapter 1- understanding hiv: why study evolution, the tools and techniques of evolutionary biology offer crucial insights into matters of life and death, human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome (aids) Like all viruses, hiv is an intracellular parasite that cannot reproduce on its own. It invades specific types of cells in the human immune system. It uses enzymatic machinery and energy of these cells to make copies of itself, killing the host cells in the process: figure 1. 5 (pg. Hiv initiates its replication phase by latching onto two proteins on the surface of a host cell: hiv binds to two surface proteins on the target cell called cd4 and coreceptor. This binding fuses the virion"s envelope with the host"s cell membrane and spills the contents of the virion into the cell. In hiv and other retroviruses, flow of genetic information is different than in cells and in viruses with dna genomes.
