Medlock, Joleen (2012) Handbook of virology. Research World, Delhi, India. ISBN 9788132333012
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Abstract
Virology is the study of viruses and virus-like agents: their structure, classification and evolution, their ways to infect and exploit cells for virus reproduction, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy. Virology is often considered a part of microbiology or of pathology. Virus structure and classification A major branch of virology is virus classification. Viruses can be classified according to the host cell they infect: animal viruses, plant viruses, fungal viruses, and bacteriophages (viruses infecting bacteria, which include the most complex viruses). Another classification uses the geometrical shape of their capsid (often a helix or an icosahedron) or the virus's structure (e.g. presence or absence of a lipid envelope). Viruses range in size from about 30 nm to about 450 nm, which means that most of them cannot be seen with light microscopes. The shape and structure of viruses has been studied by electron microscopy, NMR spectroscopy, and X-ray crystallography. The most useful and most widely used classification system distinguishes viruses according to the type of nucleic acid they use as genetic material and the viral replication method they employ to coax host cells into producing more viruses: DNA viruses (divided into double-stranded DNA viruses and the much less common single-stranded DNA viruses), RNA viruses (divided into positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses, negative sense single-stranded RNA viruses and the much less common double- stranded RNA viruses), reverse transcribing viruses (double-stranded reverse-transcribing DNA viruses and single-stranded reverse-transcribing RNA viruses including retroviruses). In addition virologists also study subviral particles, infectious entities even smaller than viruses viroids (naked circular RNA molecules infecting plants), satellites (nucleic acid molecules with or without a capsid that require a helper virus for infection and reproduction), and prions (proteins that can exist in a pathological conformation that induces other prion molecules to assume that same conformation).
| Item Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Q Science > QR Microbiology > QR355 Virology |
| Divisions: | Electronic Books |
| Depositing User: | Esam @ Hisham Muhammad |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Jan 2023 02:11 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Jan 2023 02:11 |
| URI: | http://odlsystem2.utm.my/id/eprint/3898 |
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