Lesson 16 (21/11/14)

Date : 21/11/14

Topic : Virus and Acellular Infectious Agents + Genetic transfer and Recombination

Activities
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Notes

Genetic transfer in prokaryotes can be done by transformation, transduction and conjugation.

Recombinant is the resultant cell due to integration of some donor's DNA into the recipient's DNA.

Competence is the alterations in the cell wall that make it permeable to large DNA molecules.
Some bacteria are naturally competent but some need treatment to be competent.

Transduction can be carried out in two forms (generalized transduction and specialized transduction).

Types of plasmids include dissimilation plasmid, conjugative plasmid and R factors.

Conjugation of Gram-negative bacteria is done by using pili while for Gram-positive bacteria is sticky surface molecule.

Transporons are small segments of DNA that can move from one region of a chromosome to another region of same or different chromosome (jumping DNA).

Name of microbes
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Random facts

The hydrosphere (the sea) has the largest population of virus on Earth.

Poultry shouldn't be eaten before 21 days upon birth because they might have antibiotic residue that is harmful when eaten.

The culture in Papua New Guinea is eating the brain of dead family members, and this will cause Kuru disease due to virus infection.

Virus can be cultured using embryonic eggs. Accurate calculation has to be made in order to prevent the chicks from being born. Some mistakes previously caused deaths of chicks when being studied due to birth deformities.

Capsids are involved in the transfer of genetic materials.

Identification of virus can be done by identifying the envelope proteins (spikes or peplomers), while identification of Gram-positive bacteria can be done by identifying the teichoic acid.

Cytopathic effects are the changes done to the cells. Cytopathic effects can be tested using cell line or hepa cell cultured from the infected cells (taken from patient who has just passed away).

Satellites (one of the acellular infectious agent) is called so because its visibility required high beams of light produced from satellite-like structure.
 



Muddiest point
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My own exploration

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Reflection on this topic

Before the lecture, I felt that the topic of virus is quite boring because it looks very factual and do not have anything interesting to read. But after the explanation of Dr. Wan, then only I knew about the interesting facts of virus. Then only I found the topic very fun. For me, it becomes very fun and easy to learn with all these interesting facts because it makes the knowledge we learn more related to our lives. Thanks Dr. Wan.