Splash Biography

Viruses, although discovered on the eve of the twentieth century, are ancient agents of disease (or sometimes, unnoticed residents) in the human body. In this class, we will learn how to categorize viruses and understand the answers to the following questions: 1) What do all viruses have in common? How do they contain such powerful information in small genomes and what are some tricks they use to optimize storage of this information? What techniques do viruses employ to vary their genomes to generate diverse genotypes, and consequently, phenotypes? 2) Why are viruses like Ebola or rabies so dangerous (note- they are highly fatal for very different reasons, both of which we will cover)? 3) Why do we have vaccines against some viral diseases, such as polio, while we have yet to develop a vaccine against HIV? Why is it that the vaccine for influenza changes each year? We will also briefly cover other infectious agents such as prions and viroids.

Viruses, although discovered on the eve of the twentieth century, are ancient agents of disease (or sometimes, unnoticed residents) in the human body. In this class, we will learn how to categorize viruses and understand the answers to the following questions: 1) What do all viruses have in common? How do they contain such powerful information in small genomes and what are some tricks they use to optimize storage of this information? What techniques do viruses employ to vary their genomes to generate diverse genotypes, and consequently, phenotypes? 2) Why are viruses like Ebola or rabies so dangerous (note- they are highly fatal for very different reasons, both of which we will cover)? 3) Why do we have vaccines against some viral diseases, such as polio, while we have yet to develop a vaccine against HIV? Why is it that the vaccine for influenza changes each year? We will also briefly cover other infectious agents such as prions and viroids.