1) Information about one type of disease causing Virus a) What is its form? Virus particles (known as virions) consist of two or three parts: one, the genetic material made from either DNA or RNA, long molecules that carry genetic information. Two a protein coat that protects these genes and in some cases. Three an envelope of lipids that surrounds the protein coat when they are outside a cell. The shapes of viruses range from simple helical and icosahedral forms to more complex structures. The average virus is about one one-hundredth the size of the average bacterium.
Most viruses are too small to be seen directly with an optical microscope. b) How does it invade the body? Viruses take any chance they can to find a host. They get inside the host’s cells and take it over. Viruses use the host cells machinery to make lots of copies, so many that the cell bursts and infects other cells around it. They can make more viruses very quickly – just as one virus can turn into lots of viruses and make you sick! c) What disease does virus cause? Viruses cause familiar infectious diseases such as the common cold, flu and warts.
They also cause severe illnesses such as HIV/AIDS, smallpox and haemorrhagic fevers. Viruses are like hijackers. They invade living, normal cells and use those cells to multiply and produce other viruses like themselves. d) Is it parasite or pathogen? Viruses’ cause damage to their host cells, they are classified as being pathogens. e) What does it need to reproduce? Scientist argument whether viruses should be called living things as they are obligate intracellular parasites (a parasite that needs to infect a host cell before it can reproduce). This means that they need to infect a host before reproduce and they cannot do it on their own.
2) Information about a disease caused by virus and a scientist who has researched the disease a) Name of disease and the organism that cause HIV/AIDS is an infectious disease. The letters stand for Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which is the name of the organism that causes this disease, and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, which is the name of the set of signs that characterize this condition. b) Its effects on the human body When a person is infected with HIV, the virus attacks cells that are associated with immune function.
Over the course of time, if left untreated, the virus can cause the individual to have increased difficulty fighting infections and places them at higher risk for opportunistic infections which can be deadly. There are many treatment options available to those who are infected with HIV however. These treatments help to increase immune function and decrease the amount of virus in a person’s system. There is currently no cure for infection. c) Name scientist, when and where they worked and lived Robert Charles Gallo (born March 23, 1937) is an American biomedical researcher.
He is best known for his role in the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the infectious agent responsible for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and in the development of the HIV blood test, and he has been a major contributor to subsequent HIV research.
He lives and works in Waterbury, Connecticut, United States d) What did the scientist find out? On May 4, 1984, Gallo and his collaborators published a series of four papers in the scientific journal Science demonstrating that a retrovirus they had isolated, called HTLV-III in the belief that the virus was related to the leukaemia viruses of Gallo’s earlier work, was the cause of AIDS. Gallo was awarded his second Lasker Award in 1986 for “determining that the retrovirus now known as HIV-1 is the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). ”
In 1995, Gallo published his discovery that chemokines, a class of naturally occurring compounds, can block HIV and halt the progression of AIDS. Gallo’s team at the institute maintain an ongoing program of scientific research and clinical care and treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS, treating more than 5,000 patients in Baltimore and 500,000 patients at institute-supported clinics in Africa and the Caribbean.