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Viruses may undergo two types of life cycles: the lytic cycle and the lysogenic cycle. In the lytic cycle, the virus introduces its genome into a host cell and initiates replication by hijacking the host's cellular machinery to make new copies of the virus. [12] In the lysogenic life cycle, the viral genome is incorporated into the host genome.
For the virus to reproduce and thereby establish infection, it must enter cells of the host organism and use those cells' materials. To enter the cells, proteins on the surface of the virus interact with proteins of the cell. Attachment, or adsorption, occurs between the viral particle and the host cell membrane.
Each type of protein is a specialist that usually only performs one function, so if a cell needs to do something new, it must make a new protein. Viruses force the cell to make new proteins that the cell does not need, but are needed for the virus to reproduce. Protein synthesis consists of two major steps: transcription and translation. [34]
The virus does so by either attaching to a receptor on the cell's surface or by simple mechanical force. The binding is due to electrostatic interactions and is influenced by pH and the presence of ions. The virus then releases its genetic material (either single- or double-stranded RNA or DNA) into the cell.
The herpes virus can then exit this dormant stage and re-enter the lytic cycle, causing disease symptoms. Thus, while herpes viruses can enter both the lytic and lysogenic cycles, latency allows the virus to survive and evade detection by the immune system due to low viral gene expression. The model organism for studying lysogeny is the lambda ...
Unlike viruses, they are living organisms that can live and reproduce on their own. The vast majority of bacteria don’t hurt us, and many – like the ones that live in our gut and help digest ...
New viruses: “There are some viruses that we haven’t even detected or that we don’t know have a pandemic potential,” Pablo Penaloza-MacMaster, an assistant professor of microbiology and ...
Viral transformation is the change in growth, phenotype, or indefinite reproduction of cells caused by the introduction of inheritable material. Through this process, a virus causes harmful transformations of an in vivo cell or cell culture. The term can also be understood as DNA transfection using a viral vector. Figure 1: Hepatitis-B virions