Subtopic
1 Assessment:
IDENTIFICATION OF VIRUSES AND DIAGNOSIS OF VIRAL DISEASE
After completing
this subtopic, students should have a clear understanding of the following:
• Viruses are tiny particles that must enter their host cell in during
infection
• Researchers often work with unseen organisms. In our case, it was
not necessary to visualize a virus for positive identification. Like prosecutors
reconstructing a crime they did not attend, we can use other methods to
clue us in on which virus we are dealing with:
• Each virus has its own specific host range; host ranges can be tested for viral identification• Viruses contain genetic material in the form of RNA or DNA, which can be manipulated and analyzed in the lab by methods such as restriction mapping or PCR• Computer-based bioinformatics tools are now widely used to study anything with genetic material, including viruses
• General
knowledge about viral components can be combined with (in our case) general
separation techniques to come up with clever, economically viable products
References:
(1) V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., PhD., and Sandra Blakeslee. 1998. Phantoms
in the Brain. New York: William Morrow.
Main Topic - Overall Assessment:
VIRUSES
(Image from www.handpen.com/Bio/medical.htm,
2003)
Working through this module should have given students a sense of how a
scientist might study a single organism or problem from many different angles,
using whatever available tools to answer the question at hand. Hopefully
students will have noticed that each approach is carefully planned, designed
to address a specific aspect of the chosen topic, with all the proper controls
in place. Each approach yields its own piece of information. None is complete.
In the real world, the greatest strides in scientific understanding are
made when several different groups of researchers realize they have been
studying the same problem all along. Likewise, we must combine all puzzle
pieces generated by each activity to see the whole virus.