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Molecular Virology of Human Pathogenic Viruses
Molecular Virology of Human Pathogenic Viruses presents robust coverage of the key principles of molecular virology while emphasizing virus family structure and providing key context points for topical advances in the field. The book is organized in a logical manner to aid in student discoverability and comprehension and is based on the author's more than 20 years of teaching experience. Each chapter describes the viral life cycle covering the order of classification, virion and genome structure, viral proteins, viral genome replication, and the effect on host and an emphasis on virus-host interaction is conveyed throughout the text.
Molecular Virology of Human Pathogenic Viruses provides essential information for students and professionals in virology, molecular biology, microbiology, infectious disease, and immunology and contains outstanding features such as study questions and recommended journal articles with perspectives at the end of each chapter to assist students with scientific inquiries and in reading primary literature.
KEY FEATURES
Molecular Virology of Human Pathogenic Viruses provides essential information for students and professionals in virology, molecular biology, microbiology, infectious disease, and immunology and contains outstanding features such as study questions and recommended journal articles with perspectives at the end of each chapter to assist students with scientific inquiries and in reading primary literature.
KEY FEATURES
440 pages, Paperback
Published May 4, 2016
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June 26, 2020
It’s really sad that the coronavirus pandemic was necessary to get me to read this informative text book about human pathogenic viruses because this is some of the most mysterious and fascinating subject matter I’ve ever encountered. However, this work, like so much of academia, seems more intent upon differentiation and categorization than upon posing hypotheses about the mysterious existence of these unseen foes. One wonders, after reading this book, if perhaps we do not confuse the task of understanding with the process of organizing, labeling and categorizing. To assist, I’ve installed a helpful vocabulary in the comments section.
Perhaps the fear propagated among the public over the coronavirus will motivate people to gain enhanced understanding of the virosphere and in particular the wide array of diseases caused by viruses in general, including cancer. In addition to chemical carcinogens, smoking and radiation, viruses can also cause cancer, which is the most formidable disease known to mankind. About 15% of human cancer is attributable to viruses.
It is possible that viruses emerged in conjunction with the rise of human civilization, agriculture and animal husbandry. Although human beings are estimated to have originated about 3-4 million years ago, the oldest record of viruses in history is only about 4,000 years ago, with the evidence of smallpox in Egyptian mummies. Small pox was also described in ancient China around 700 BC and is believed to have caused the collapse of the Inca and Aztec cultures in South America. Humans didn’t discover viruses until the turn of the 20th century.
Certainly, knowing more about viruses will assist us in combatting them; but perhaps more importantly comes awareness that we ourselves are parasitic upon the earth and that living with the earth in symbiosis necessitates self-management of our endeavors, which bear directly upon the health of our host. An increase in contact with wild animals, due to the expansion of the human habitat, is believed to be the main cause of the emergence of new viruses. As a result of our intrusions, viruses that initially only existed in rainforests are able to be transmit into humans. In certain ways, viruses manifest much like an immune system for the rain forest, attempting to protect it from invading human activity.
The majority of viral diseases are attributable to the responses of our immune system (inflammation) which is activated to inhibit viral propagation. We see that much antiviral therapy involves regulating our immune responses; and an extension of this is that healing is a function of the body’s particular responses to the stresses of infection. We may very well discover means alternative to chemical concoctions that that will enable us to engage or disengage our immune responses at will, so that we may avoid over-reacting or under-reacting to the stresses of unwanted external intrusions. In this regard, such radical methods as faith-healing, meditative therapies, hypnosis, and environmental modification do not seem so far-fetched as they once did.
Are we Playing with Fire?
It is fair to say that most human diseases are caused by the lack of a few specific genes related to the diseases. In theory, complementation of the missing genes could cure the diseases if the right genes could be delivered to the diseased tissue. Scientists have attempted to use viruses as vehicles for this purpose.
Viral vectors refer to recombinant viruses that are experimentally modified for the purpose of gene delivery. There is an effort to explore the use of some viruses for cancer therapy by exploiting viruses that are capable of killing cancerous cells, but not normal cells. These are called “oncolytic viruses” and include adenovirus, herpesvirus, poxvirus, reovirus and measles virus (I will post in the comment section a summary pertinent to these various viruses). Retrovirus, lentivirus and adenovirus are also commonly used for transgene expression in research laboratories and have been used as viral vectors in the past.
This process is termed “gene therapy” as opposed to conventional “drug therapy”. Gene therapy is not yet fully approved and most people do not understand how scientists are messing around with viruses in this manner. I doubt most people even realize that “gene therapy” involves having manipulated live viruses inserted into the body.
Certainly, the Chinese screwing around with the Covid-19 Coronavirus is evidence enough that men are tinkering with something beyond their control, like an infant playing with fire. At some point, humans must accept that they are not God and recognize the devastating effects rendered by their creations. Not just Covid-19, but many others: nuclear arms, fossil fuel emissions, deforestation, ground water contamination, war, etc.
Why are we so stupid as to invoke the risks of extinction by manipulating an environment obviously preset for our livelihood? Especially when each step we take to alter it accelerates our demise. It would seem that hell on earth arises not by the wrath of God, but by the stupid arrogance of humankind.
UFO enthusiasts make us shudder with tales of aliens abducting and experimenting upon us, injecting us with who knows what; and yet we ourselves are cultivating viruses in chickens, monkeys, pigs and rabbits in efforts to grow, manipulate and understand more about this vast inner universe.
Evolution
Viruses inhabit both plants and animals. Although all living organisms on the planet have a DNA genome, viruses are the only organisms that may still employ RNA as a genome. Viruses are like an interface between living and nonliving matter because outside of living cells they are simply a physical entity. They can only replicate inside living cells. However, viruses are an infectious agent because they are transmissible from infected hosts. Viruses are about 100 to 1000 times smaller than their host cells and replicate by mechanical assembly of components inside an infected cell, not by division as cells do. Viruses can rapidly cope with environmental changes by mutating.
Clearly viruses are constantly affecting the human genome, mutating and effectuating chromosomal re-arrangement, as an obvious catalyst for evolution. It is freaky to think that these semi-alive, mechanical particles floating all around and inside us, seeking to replicate profusely, are altering us in the process. We tend to only recognize adverse symptoms of disease but our evolution involves apparently beneficial symptoms as well. Perhaps the ability to think, feel, see, hear, smell, taste and have sex all arise from mutations that motivate us in some symbiotic way, to act in a manner that benefits some viral growth in our bodies. In fact, some viruses may have homesteaded our bodies for so long that we now think of them as components of human cells.
And there are mysterious things described in this book that aren’t even viruses. They are referred to as sub-viral agents; transmissible things that do not fit into the definition of a virus. They are known as satellite viruses, viroids and prions. The satellite virus is a particle that is indistinguishable from ordinary virus particles except that it depends on another virus as a helper for its propagation.
Viroids are comprised of only a circular RNA molecule found in plants and are devoid of any protein component. As the smallest infectious pathogen known, viroids cause lesions in plants and have been found in agricultural products such as potatoes, avocados, tomatoes, apples and coconuts, causing yield losses. Viroids are the only infectious agent known that lacks a protein component such as a capsid; instead the RNA is circular to confer external resistance.
Prions are comprised of protein only and are devoid of any nucleic acid. Priors have occurred in Mad Cow Disease or Sheep Scrapie. The first human prion disease reported was among members of a tribe in Papua New Guinea that practiced funerary cannibalism. Mad Cow disease first appeared in 1985 in the U.K. because slaughtered meats of afflicted animals were recycled as animal feeds. Even after the feed was subjected to inactivation treatment (heat/chemical), to kill viruses, the infections persisted because the prion is not a virus. The infectivity of prions is not inactivated by heating because there is no nucleic acid to destroy. Remarkably, the infectivity of prions is also resistant to radiation. It is unclear how prions, as a mere protein, can trespass mucosal barriers, circumvent the immune system and travel across the blood-brain barrier.
Symbiosis
What if we attempted to communicate with viruses? How in the world would we go about such a thing? Certainly we would want to inform viruses that they are within a larger organism and their voracious activities significantly affect that larger organism, upon which they obviously depend. What if the Milky Way itself was a functioning cell within the larger universe and somewhere out there a larger organism was peering in at us with advanced microscopes and wished to tell us that our activities affect it? How would they tell us? Send magnetic waves to produce crop-circles in our fields? Send in asteroids or gamma rays to radiate us? Or perhaps they would develop one of our own as a vector, like Jesus Christ, as a message to the collective human genome?
The vital yet difficult thing for humans to understand is that the earth is alive and until we endeavor to treat it as a living organism we will sustain the greater peril of its demise. That doesn’t mean we have to worship the earth, only recognize its importance symbiotically and respect it.
The battle going on inside of us is like a war in which viral invaders, like violent protestors, seek to usurp the rule of the organized human system of cellular structures; and if the viral invaders win, the system dies because the viral invaders are incapable of managing it property. Disease producing viruses are like barbarians that overrun a civilization that withers under their rule because they lack the innate properties and motivations inherent to civilization. But does global-humanity differ?
Human organization worldwide is quite similar to a developing system that presently lacks an evolved central nervous system capable of directing it as a whole. Instead, it is like connected but differentiated systems struggling against one another to secure the available resources, much like the molecular war happening inside of us. As with viral infection, unbridled human replication will lead to the death of the earthly host because of over-exploitation of the resources the host provides.
Reading this book helps one understand the battle that the immune system is constantly engaged in just to keep one alive. One comes to realize how truly harmful are activities which compromise the immune system; much like if an army’s general suddenly defected to the enemy in the height of battle. We should become more aware of our immune system and endeavor to work with it by eliminating obesity, exercising, getting a proper diet and not overwhelming the system with abusive substances. The human cells in our bodies are at war to maintain dominance of the microbiome. Let us endeavor to help them in any way we can.
Conclusion
The virus life cycle involves cell entry, genome replication and exit. The cellular membrane is the first barrier the virus has to penetrate. The nuclear membrane is the second. Entry first involves encountering a host cell and attaching to the cell surface. The virus then penetrates the cell, gaining access to the cytoplasm, where it then sheds its capsid (becomes naked). The naked viral genome then replicates until ultimately releasing from the cell. Some viruses replicate in the cytoplasm and others enter the nucleus via a nuclear pore.
It seems much like sex. The virus becomes attracted and attached to a cell before ultimately penetrating it. Once naked, the virus intermingles inside the cell until eventually ejaculating its progeny out of the cell. Like contraception preventatives, the immune system and anti-viral drugs endeavor to interrupt the viral life cycle in any of its various stages.
-End-
Perhaps the fear propagated among the public over the coronavirus will motivate people to gain enhanced understanding of the virosphere and in particular the wide array of diseases caused by viruses in general, including cancer. In addition to chemical carcinogens, smoking and radiation, viruses can also cause cancer, which is the most formidable disease known to mankind. About 15% of human cancer is attributable to viruses.
It is possible that viruses emerged in conjunction with the rise of human civilization, agriculture and animal husbandry. Although human beings are estimated to have originated about 3-4 million years ago, the oldest record of viruses in history is only about 4,000 years ago, with the evidence of smallpox in Egyptian mummies. Small pox was also described in ancient China around 700 BC and is believed to have caused the collapse of the Inca and Aztec cultures in South America. Humans didn’t discover viruses until the turn of the 20th century.
Certainly, knowing more about viruses will assist us in combatting them; but perhaps more importantly comes awareness that we ourselves are parasitic upon the earth and that living with the earth in symbiosis necessitates self-management of our endeavors, which bear directly upon the health of our host. An increase in contact with wild animals, due to the expansion of the human habitat, is believed to be the main cause of the emergence of new viruses. As a result of our intrusions, viruses that initially only existed in rainforests are able to be transmit into humans. In certain ways, viruses manifest much like an immune system for the rain forest, attempting to protect it from invading human activity.
The majority of viral diseases are attributable to the responses of our immune system (inflammation) which is activated to inhibit viral propagation. We see that much antiviral therapy involves regulating our immune responses; and an extension of this is that healing is a function of the body’s particular responses to the stresses of infection. We may very well discover means alternative to chemical concoctions that that will enable us to engage or disengage our immune responses at will, so that we may avoid over-reacting or under-reacting to the stresses of unwanted external intrusions. In this regard, such radical methods as faith-healing, meditative therapies, hypnosis, and environmental modification do not seem so far-fetched as they once did.
Are we Playing with Fire?
It is fair to say that most human diseases are caused by the lack of a few specific genes related to the diseases. In theory, complementation of the missing genes could cure the diseases if the right genes could be delivered to the diseased tissue. Scientists have attempted to use viruses as vehicles for this purpose.
Viral vectors refer to recombinant viruses that are experimentally modified for the purpose of gene delivery. There is an effort to explore the use of some viruses for cancer therapy by exploiting viruses that are capable of killing cancerous cells, but not normal cells. These are called “oncolytic viruses” and include adenovirus, herpesvirus, poxvirus, reovirus and measles virus (I will post in the comment section a summary pertinent to these various viruses). Retrovirus, lentivirus and adenovirus are also commonly used for transgene expression in research laboratories and have been used as viral vectors in the past.
This process is termed “gene therapy” as opposed to conventional “drug therapy”. Gene therapy is not yet fully approved and most people do not understand how scientists are messing around with viruses in this manner. I doubt most people even realize that “gene therapy” involves having manipulated live viruses inserted into the body.
Certainly, the Chinese screwing around with the Covid-19 Coronavirus is evidence enough that men are tinkering with something beyond their control, like an infant playing with fire. At some point, humans must accept that they are not God and recognize the devastating effects rendered by their creations. Not just Covid-19, but many others: nuclear arms, fossil fuel emissions, deforestation, ground water contamination, war, etc.
Why are we so stupid as to invoke the risks of extinction by manipulating an environment obviously preset for our livelihood? Especially when each step we take to alter it accelerates our demise. It would seem that hell on earth arises not by the wrath of God, but by the stupid arrogance of humankind.
UFO enthusiasts make us shudder with tales of aliens abducting and experimenting upon us, injecting us with who knows what; and yet we ourselves are cultivating viruses in chickens, monkeys, pigs and rabbits in efforts to grow, manipulate and understand more about this vast inner universe.
Evolution
Viruses inhabit both plants and animals. Although all living organisms on the planet have a DNA genome, viruses are the only organisms that may still employ RNA as a genome. Viruses are like an interface between living and nonliving matter because outside of living cells they are simply a physical entity. They can only replicate inside living cells. However, viruses are an infectious agent because they are transmissible from infected hosts. Viruses are about 100 to 1000 times smaller than their host cells and replicate by mechanical assembly of components inside an infected cell, not by division as cells do. Viruses can rapidly cope with environmental changes by mutating.
Clearly viruses are constantly affecting the human genome, mutating and effectuating chromosomal re-arrangement, as an obvious catalyst for evolution. It is freaky to think that these semi-alive, mechanical particles floating all around and inside us, seeking to replicate profusely, are altering us in the process. We tend to only recognize adverse symptoms of disease but our evolution involves apparently beneficial symptoms as well. Perhaps the ability to think, feel, see, hear, smell, taste and have sex all arise from mutations that motivate us in some symbiotic way, to act in a manner that benefits some viral growth in our bodies. In fact, some viruses may have homesteaded our bodies for so long that we now think of them as components of human cells.
And there are mysterious things described in this book that aren’t even viruses. They are referred to as sub-viral agents; transmissible things that do not fit into the definition of a virus. They are known as satellite viruses, viroids and prions. The satellite virus is a particle that is indistinguishable from ordinary virus particles except that it depends on another virus as a helper for its propagation.
Viroids are comprised of only a circular RNA molecule found in plants and are devoid of any protein component. As the smallest infectious pathogen known, viroids cause lesions in plants and have been found in agricultural products such as potatoes, avocados, tomatoes, apples and coconuts, causing yield losses. Viroids are the only infectious agent known that lacks a protein component such as a capsid; instead the RNA is circular to confer external resistance.
Prions are comprised of protein only and are devoid of any nucleic acid. Priors have occurred in Mad Cow Disease or Sheep Scrapie. The first human prion disease reported was among members of a tribe in Papua New Guinea that practiced funerary cannibalism. Mad Cow disease first appeared in 1985 in the U.K. because slaughtered meats of afflicted animals were recycled as animal feeds. Even after the feed was subjected to inactivation treatment (heat/chemical), to kill viruses, the infections persisted because the prion is not a virus. The infectivity of prions is not inactivated by heating because there is no nucleic acid to destroy. Remarkably, the infectivity of prions is also resistant to radiation. It is unclear how prions, as a mere protein, can trespass mucosal barriers, circumvent the immune system and travel across the blood-brain barrier.
Symbiosis
What if we attempted to communicate with viruses? How in the world would we go about such a thing? Certainly we would want to inform viruses that they are within a larger organism and their voracious activities significantly affect that larger organism, upon which they obviously depend. What if the Milky Way itself was a functioning cell within the larger universe and somewhere out there a larger organism was peering in at us with advanced microscopes and wished to tell us that our activities affect it? How would they tell us? Send magnetic waves to produce crop-circles in our fields? Send in asteroids or gamma rays to radiate us? Or perhaps they would develop one of our own as a vector, like Jesus Christ, as a message to the collective human genome?
The vital yet difficult thing for humans to understand is that the earth is alive and until we endeavor to treat it as a living organism we will sustain the greater peril of its demise. That doesn’t mean we have to worship the earth, only recognize its importance symbiotically and respect it.
The battle going on inside of us is like a war in which viral invaders, like violent protestors, seek to usurp the rule of the organized human system of cellular structures; and if the viral invaders win, the system dies because the viral invaders are incapable of managing it property. Disease producing viruses are like barbarians that overrun a civilization that withers under their rule because they lack the innate properties and motivations inherent to civilization. But does global-humanity differ?
Human organization worldwide is quite similar to a developing system that presently lacks an evolved central nervous system capable of directing it as a whole. Instead, it is like connected but differentiated systems struggling against one another to secure the available resources, much like the molecular war happening inside of us. As with viral infection, unbridled human replication will lead to the death of the earthly host because of over-exploitation of the resources the host provides.
Reading this book helps one understand the battle that the immune system is constantly engaged in just to keep one alive. One comes to realize how truly harmful are activities which compromise the immune system; much like if an army’s general suddenly defected to the enemy in the height of battle. We should become more aware of our immune system and endeavor to work with it by eliminating obesity, exercising, getting a proper diet and not overwhelming the system with abusive substances. The human cells in our bodies are at war to maintain dominance of the microbiome. Let us endeavor to help them in any way we can.
Conclusion
The virus life cycle involves cell entry, genome replication and exit. The cellular membrane is the first barrier the virus has to penetrate. The nuclear membrane is the second. Entry first involves encountering a host cell and attaching to the cell surface. The virus then penetrates the cell, gaining access to the cytoplasm, where it then sheds its capsid (becomes naked). The naked viral genome then replicates until ultimately releasing from the cell. Some viruses replicate in the cytoplasm and others enter the nucleus via a nuclear pore.
It seems much like sex. The virus becomes attracted and attached to a cell before ultimately penetrating it. Once naked, the virus intermingles inside the cell until eventually ejaculating its progeny out of the cell. Like contraception preventatives, the immune system and anti-viral drugs endeavor to interrupt the viral life cycle in any of its various stages.
-End-
December 6, 2019
The information is pretty well written and easy to understand; however, it is quite a bit outdated. For example, the number of HIV+ patients is much higher now and HBV can now be cured.
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