Is influenza A quasispecies?
The population of influenza virus consists of a huge variety of variants, called quasispecies, due to error-prone replication.
What is quasispecies concept?
1 The Concept of Quasispecies The term quasispecies describes a type of population structure in which collections of closely related genomes are subjected to a continuous process of genetic variation, competition, and selection.
What type of nucleic acid does influenza B have?
All influenza viruses consist of single-stranded RNA as opposed to dual-stranded DNA. The RNA genes of influenza viruses are made up of chains of nucleotides that are bonded together and coded by the letters A, C, G and U, which stand for adenine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil, respectively.
Why virus is called quasi living?
The RNA molecule can shed fragments of itself, and these incomplete bits can approximate some kinds of life functions. But crucially, quasi-life forms are able to replicate themselves by pirating the machinery of living cells. Since they cannot survive independently, they are technically non-life structures. Virus.
How does genetic drift apply to influenza A virus?
One way influenza viruses change is called “antigenic drift.” These are small changes (or mutations) in the genes of influenza viruses that can lead to changes in the surface proteins of the virus: HA (hemagglutinin) and NA (neuraminidase).
What is lethal mutagenesis?
The lethal mutagenesis hypothesis states that within-host populations of pathogens can be driven to extinction when the load of deleterious mutations is artificially increased with a mutagen, and becomes too high for the population to be maintained.
Can DNA viruses be quasispecies?
Viral quasispecies are the mutant distributions (also termed mutant swarms or mutant clouds) that are generated upon replication of RNA viruses, and some DNA viruses in infected cells and organisms.
What is a wild type virus?
wild-type virus – HIV that has no drug resistance mutations. This is usually the virus that you were first infected with. However, approximately 10% of people who are diagnosed with HIV in the UK are likely to already have resistance to one or more HIV drugs. This is called transmitted drug resistance.
Is flu virus A RNA virus?
Genome. Coronaviruses and influenza viruses are both enveloped, single-stranded RNA viruses, and both are encapsidated by nucleoprotein. However, the genomes of these 2 viruses differ in polarity and segmentation. Influenza virus is comprised of 8 single-stranded negative-sense, viral RNA segments.
Is influenza B an RNA virus?
Influenza A and B viruses are members of the Orthomyxoviridae family of single-stranded RNA viruses.
Is the flu antigenic shift or drift?
While influenza viruses change all the time due to antigenic drift, antigenic shift happens less frequently. Influenza pandemics occur very rarely; there have been four pandemics in the past 100 years.
