Study questions Topic 1 (Introduction to virology)
What is a virus?
- What are the two facts that provide an underlying simplicity and order to viruses?
- A viral genome must make mRNA: TRUE OR FALSE? Does it ever encode the ability to decode that mRNA?
- What is a virus?
- Do all viruses make you sick?
- Why is studying viruses an exercise in cell biology?
- What does (+) and (‐) strand RNA mean? What is (+) and (‐) strand DNA?
- What is the Baltimore system? What does it tell us?
Unconventional viruses or atypical viruses
- What is a viroid? How does it replicate? Does it encode proteins? How does it make plants sick? How do satellites differ from viroids?
- Name a satellite involved in human disease. Why is HDV a hybrid between viroid and satellite? How do prions cause disease?
- What are the three different types of spongiform encephalopathies? Explain mad cow disease and why it scared people.
- Why can’t mouse pathogenic prions cause disease in hamsters? True or false: all known prions cause disease.
Think Questions
We just learned that most viruses are much smaller than bacteria.
- Compare the sizes of viruses and bacteria.
- Why are viruses able to be so much smaller than bacteria?
Short answer questions
- In general, what can you say about the size of most viruses in relation to bacteria?
- Small, circular, single-stranded molecules of infectious that cause a few plant diseases such as potato spindle-tuber disease, cucumber pale fruit, citrus exocortis disease, and cadang-cadang (coconuts) are called ____________
- Infectious proteins particles thought to be responsible for a group of transmissible and/or inherited neurodegenerative diseases including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, kuru, and Gerstmann-Straussler- syndrome in humans as well as scrapie in sheep and goats are called ______________
- Normal sterilization procedures may not necessarily prevent the transmission of prion diseases. Why might this be?