great visuals of retrovirus life cycle
- Thread starter natasa778
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usedtobeperkytina
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Well, it is like invasion of the body snatchers.
Tina
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_Kim_
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What a fantastic little movie. Thanks for that natasa.
omerbasket
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Great video!
For the people that know science here: I still keep wondering a couple of things:
1) Is there any chance, in your opinion, to find a substance that would kill viruses (not just interfere with their replication)? I mean, we can kill bacterias, why won't we be able to defuse viruses?
2) if we are able to stop their replication - and cells are dying - why is the virus still in the system (of, let's say, people with AIDS)? I mean, the cell is dead, there are no viruses outside of cells, so were are the viruses? does the new DNA of the cell (that was being infected by a retrovirus) goes into the new cell, so every cell from now on will have the defective DNA?
3) if the virus has it's mechanism to break the DNA chain and enter itself to this chain - can't we produce drugs that dose the breaking part, and break the DNA from both sides of the viral DNA, and than re-attach the two seperate chains of DNA we now have?
For the people that know science here: I still keep wondering a couple of things:
1) Is there any chance, in your opinion, to find a substance that would kill viruses (not just interfere with their replication)? I mean, we can kill bacterias, why won't we be able to defuse viruses?
2) if we are able to stop their replication - and cells are dying - why is the virus still in the system (of, let's say, people with AIDS)? I mean, the cell is dead, there are no viruses outside of cells, so were are the viruses? does the new DNA of the cell (that was being infected by a retrovirus) goes into the new cell, so every cell from now on will have the defective DNA?
3) if the virus has it's mechanism to break the DNA chain and enter itself to this chain - can't we produce drugs that dose the breaking part, and break the DNA from both sides of the viral DNA, and than re-attach the two seperate chains of DNA we now have?
Overstressed
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Well, you should google on the 'Tre Designer Enzyme', it does exactly that, it cuts out HIV' DNA...
OS.
OS.
omerbasket
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Here's some information I found about it:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=designer-enzyme-cuts-hiv
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17600219
Very interesting. I wonder what has been happening with it since then (it's from 2007) and also, they mention some difficulties with HIV - and I wonder if XMRV might be easier to deal with regarding this enzyme. Also, I wonder if it would be easy to turn this enzyme to act against XMRV, at least in the same efficiancy it acts against XMRV.
Fascinating stuff, although I felt like crying while watching that thinking of our poor cells under attack in a similar way from XMRV. It's incredible how viruses know how to do all that. Thanks for posting. The designer enzyme is fascinating. It'd be great if something like that could be easier to make for XMRV since it's a simple retrovirus.
Sunny
Sunny
starryeyes
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Those are some amazing visuals and a very understandable explanation. Thanks for posting this.