Aww nonny, I hope it goes well and you recover quickly!
Some facts based on my special interests:
→Arenaviridae get their name from the grainy "sand" like appearance they have under a microscope, which comes from ribosomes that they steal from host cells. The ribosomes have no purpose in replication, so virologists still don't know WHY they do that.
→Arenaviridae are classified as "negative-sense" viruses, but they're ACTUALLY ambisense- this means the sections of their RNA go in a different direction from the majority of their genome, as opposed to going in the same direction.
Fun fact: I did my thesis on Arenaviridae, and during my microbiology class, my professor was sick and didn't feel like teaching, so he put on Osmosis Jones, and told us "The student who can give me the most well-thought out, well researched hypothesis on what kind of pathogen Thrax is, will get their next exam test rounded up to the nearest letter grade."
I did a three page paper on how I hypothesized that Thrax was an Arenaviridae, specifically the Lymphocytic choriomeningitis Arenaviridae (LCMV) due to the following points/evidence:
-Thrax took trophies from his hosts, and he didn't need them- for survival or replication. (Like an Arenaviridae)
-Symptoms started off as a common cold with sore throat, malaise, fever and headache, which got exponentially worse. (Similar to the prodromal phase of LCMV)
-He caused a major fever by infiltrating the brain and attacking/sabotaging the hypothalamus. (While LCMV doesn't target the hypothalamus, meningitis is an overall inflammation of the brain, which is only exacerbated by the fever of LCMV)
-Frank contracted Thrax by eating a hard boiled egg that had been handled by a chimp, and dropped on the floor of the chimp's enclosure. (LCMV can be contracted by primates, but the main reservoir is mice and their urine- which is common in zoos if they're not cleaned properly.)
-Thrax caused spontaneous rupture and hemorrhage of cells and membranes he attacked. (LCMV, as an Arenaviridae, is a hemorrhagic fever, similar to Lassa fever)
I presented this to my professor, and he picked my hypothesis- and encouraged me to pursue a thesis about Arenaviridae!
Re: OT Thread
Some facts based on my special interests:
→Arenaviridae get their name from the grainy "sand" like appearance they have under a microscope, which comes from ribosomes that they steal from host cells. The ribosomes have no purpose in replication, so virologists still don't know WHY they do that.
→Arenaviridae are classified as "negative-sense" viruses, but they're ACTUALLY ambisense- this means the sections of their RNA go in a different direction from the majority of their genome, as opposed to going in the same direction.
Fun fact: I did my thesis on Arenaviridae, and during my microbiology class, my professor was sick and didn't feel like teaching, so he put on Osmosis Jones, and told us "The student who can give me the most well-thought out, well researched hypothesis on what kind of pathogen Thrax is, will get their next exam test rounded up to the nearest letter grade."
I did a three page paper on how I hypothesized that Thrax was an Arenaviridae, specifically the Lymphocytic choriomeningitis Arenaviridae (LCMV) due to the following points/evidence:
-Thrax took trophies from his hosts, and he didn't need them- for survival or replication. (Like an Arenaviridae)
-Symptoms started off as a common cold with sore throat, malaise, fever and headache, which got exponentially worse. (Similar to the prodromal phase of LCMV)
-He caused a major fever by infiltrating the brain and attacking/sabotaging the hypothalamus. (While LCMV doesn't target the hypothalamus, meningitis is an overall inflammation of the brain, which is only exacerbated by the fever of LCMV)
-Frank contracted Thrax by eating a hard boiled egg that had been handled by a chimp, and dropped on the floor of the chimp's enclosure. (LCMV can be contracted by primates, but the main reservoir is mice and their urine- which is common in zoos if they're not cleaned properly.)
-Thrax caused spontaneous rupture and hemorrhage of cells and membranes he attacked. (LCMV, as an Arenaviridae, is a hemorrhagic fever, similar to Lassa fever)
I presented this to my professor, and he picked my hypothesis- and encouraged me to pursue a thesis about Arenaviridae!