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Viral genetics encoding viral factors will determine the degree of viral pathogenesis. This can be measured as virulence, which can be used to compare the quantitative degree of pathology between related viruses. In other words, different virus strains possessing different virus factors can lead to different degrees of virulence, which in turn ...
Virulence is a pathogen's or microorganism's ability to cause damage to a host. In most cases, especially in animal systems, virulence refers to the degree of damage caused by a microbe to its host. [1] The pathogenicity of an organism—its ability to cause disease—is determined by its virulence factors.
Virulence factors (preferably known as pathogenicity factors or effectors in botany) are cellular structures, molecules and regulatory systems that enable microbial pathogens (bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa) to achieve the following: [1] [2] colonization of a niche in the host (this includes movement towards and attachment to host cells ...
Reversion or allelic replacement of the mutated gene should lead to restoration of pathogenicity." To apply the molecular Koch's postulates to human diseases, researchers must identify which microbial genes are potentially responsible for symptoms of pathogenicity, often by sequencing the full genome to compare which nucleotides are homologous ...
Pathogenicity is the potential disease-causing capacity of pathogens, involving a combination of infectivity (pathogen's ability to infect hosts) and virulence (severity of host disease). Koch's postulates are used to establish causal relationships between microbial pathogens and diseases.
The relative ability of viruses to cause disease is described in terms of virulence. Other diseases are under investigation to discover if they have a virus as the causative agent, such as the possible connection between human herpesvirus 6 (HHV6) and neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis and chronic fatigue syndrome. [108]
The difference between an infection and a colonization is often only a matter of circumstance. Non-pathogenic organisms can become pathogenic given specific conditions, and even the most virulent organism requires certain circumstances to cause a compromising infection.
Multiple genetic elements of human-affecting pathogens contribute to the transfer of virulence factors: plasmids, pathogenicity island, prophages, bacteriophages, transposons, and integrative and conjugative elements. [13] [50] Pathogenicity islands and their detection are the focus of several bioinformatics efforts involved in pathogenomics.