11 - Virus check-in - March 8

What does pathogenicity refer to?

• The capacity to cause death

• The rate at which mutations occur in a genome

• The quality or state of being pathogenic

• The ability of a pathogen to multiply within the host

What determines the virulence of a disease?

• The ability of the pathogen to multiply within the host

• The incubation period of the disease

• The strategies used to contain the disease

• The rate of mutations in the pathogen

What is the incubation period?

• The time it takes for containment measures to be effective

• The time it takes for a disease to cause death

• The time it takes for an infection to develop after exposure

• The duration of the infectious period

What does the term 'lethality' refer to?

• The ability to cause new infections

• The effectiveness of containment strategies

• The capacity to cause death or serious harm

• The severity of the disease

What is meant by 'infectivity'?

• The rate at which a pathogen mutates

• The period when an infected person shows symptoms

• The ability of a disease to cause death

• The ability of an infectious agent to cause a new infection

Classify the statement below as evidence for viruses as LIVING or NONLIVING.

"Viruses, however, parasitize essentially all biomolecular aspects of life. That is, they depend on the host cell for the raw materials and energy necessary for nucleic acid synthesis, protein synthesis, processing and transport, and all other biochemical activities that allow the virus to multiply and spread."

• Living

• Non-living

• This statement does not evidence either argument

Classify the statement below as evidence for viruses as LIVING or NONLIVING.

"Sequence analysis of the virus (Mimivirus) revealed numerous genes

previously thought to exist only in cellular organisms. Some of these genes are involved in

making the proteins encoded by the viral DNA..."

• Living

• Non-living

• This statement does not evidence either argument

Viruses were first seen as...

• poison

• eukaryotes

• worms/pathogenic parasites

• larger bacteria

• bacterial fragments

The categorization of viruses as nonliving during much of the modern era of biological science has had an unintended consequence:

• viruses being ignored in the study of evolution

• viruses not being taken seriously as pathogenic disease-causing agents

• scientists dedicating excessive resources into disproving the categorization

• biologists and chemists largely refusing to study viruses

"In the late 19th century researchers realized that certain diseases, including rabies and foot-and-mouth, were caused by particles that seemed to..."

• behave like bacteria but were much smaller

• replicate at a rate much faster than any other pathogenic entity

• be easily diluted and therefore an entity that was unable to reproduce

• alter its properties and effects on host organisms with rapid occurrence, making the particles extremely difficult to study