Saturday, November 5, 2011

Help grade 11 bio !!!?

This is a really poor question and you can tell your professor this. Viruses typically enter a cell through two means depending on the structure of the VIRUS not the cell. These are receptor mediated endocytosis (RME) or direct fusion. With RME the virus interact with a receptor molecule on the cell membrane. This can be a glycoprotein such as CD4 in HIV or a sugar such as sialic acid in influenza. At this point, the virus is taken up in an endosomal vesicle. As the pH drops in the vesicle the virus is released to the cytoplasm where the viral nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) transits to the site of replication. In direct fusion an enveloped virus fuses its membrane with that of the cell (after interacting with a receptor molecule). Here the capsid is broken and the viral nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) transits to the site of replication. The cell structure varies between plasma membrane and vesicle.

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