BIOL359 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Intracellular Parasite, Reverse Transcriptase, Body Fluid
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1. 1 the natural history of the hiv epidemic. Aids was recognized in 1981 in the us. Hiv was the virus that was responsible for aids. A new hiv infection starts when a bodily fluid carries the virus from an infected person directly onto a mucous membrane or into the bloodstream of an uninfected person. Hiv travels via semen, vaginal and rectal secretions, blood, and breast milk. Like all viruses, hiv is an intracellular parasite incapable of reproducing on its own. Hiv is a parasite that afflicts cells of the human immune system. Azt is the first drug approved to fight hiv, interferes with reverse transcriptase. Heritable traits that lead to survival and abundant reproduction spread in populations; heritable traits that lead to reproductive failure disappear. In human populations, some individuals carry alleles that make them resistant to infection with hiv: the frequency of the best-known protective allele is highest in regions with low rates of hiv infection.