Viral structure and components

Properties of viruses:
1- Filterable agents (capable of passing through a fine-pore filter.
2- Intracellular parasites.
3- Cannot make energy or proteins independently of a host cell.
4- Genomes may be RNA or DNA, but not both (the genome codes for the few proteins necessary
for replication.
-Viral proteins can be:
- non-structural (ej. Nucleic acid polymerases)
- enzymes inside the virions, essential for the initiation of the viral replicative cycle
-structural (ej. They become incorporated and form part of the virion)
- facilitate transfer of nucleic acid from one cell to another, participate in attachment,
protect genome, and provide structural symmetry
5- Have a naked capsid or envelope morphology.
6- Viral components are assembled and do not replicate by division.

Structure and Morphology:
- DNA or RNA + Structural proteins = nucleocapsid Naked virion
Ej. Picornavirus, Adenovirus, TMV
- Nucleocapsid + Glycoprotein Membrane = Enveloped virion
Ej. HIV

Viral Structure:
- Naked capsid
- environmentally stable
- released from cell by lysis
- easy spread
- can dry out and retain infectivity
- can survive the adverse conditions of gut
- resistant to detergents and poor sewage treatment
- antibody may be sufficient for immunoprotection
- Envelope
- environmentally labile (acid, detergent, drying, heat)
- modifies cell membrane
- released from cell by budding/lysis
- must stay wet to retain infectivity
- cannot survive the adverse conditions of the gut
- does not need to kill the cell to spread
- may need antibody and cell-mediated response for protection and control

- Function of both:
- protect genome from damage during the extracellular passage of the virus from one cell to
another.
- aid in the process of entry into cell
- package enzymes essential for the early steps of the infectious process.

Basic Structural Forms of Viruses:
- Naked icosahedral
-ej. Poliovirus, adenovirus, hepatitis A virus
- Naked helical
-ej. Tobacco mosaic virus (so far no human viruses for this structure)
- Enveloped icosahedral
-ej. Herpes virus, yellow fever virus, rubella virus
- Enveloped helical
-ej. Rabies virus, influenza virus, parainfluenza virus, mumps virus, measles virus
- Complex
-ej. Poxvirus, T4

Unconventional/Atypical virus-like agents:
- Viroids small single stranded circular RNAs which has some double-stranded regions; RNAs
are not packaged, do not code for any proteins, and so far only associated with plants disease.
- Defective viruses composed of viral nucleic acid and proteins, but cannot replicate without a
helper virus.
- Pseudovirions contains host cell DNA instead of viral inside the capsid; formed during
infection with certain viruses, when the host DNA is fragmented and pieces of it are
incorporated within the capsule; can infect cells, but cannot replicate.

Prions:
- PROteinaceous Infectious Particles: contains only protein
- Examples of prion-caused human disease: Kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, Gerstmann-Straussler
- Also cause scrapie in sheep and mad cow disease
- Prion Hypothesis suggests that an abnormal conformer (PrP
Sc
) of the cellular prion protein
(PrP
c
) is capable of inducing PrP
c
to undergo a conformational change to PrP
Sc
.
- this conformational change can be spontaneously, hereditary (patients carrying a mutation),
or infectious (from an exogenous infective source)
-once a misfolded form has arisen, other PrP
c
are converted, propagating the disease in a
Chain rxn.

Factors that affect host range:
- Whether the virus can get into the host cell
- If the virus can enter the host cell, is the appropriate cellular machinery available for the virus to
replicate?
- If the virus can replicate, can infectious virus get out of the cell and spread the infection?

Basic steps in viral disease:
- Acquisition
- Initiation of infection at a primary site
- Incubation period, when the virus is amplified and may spread to a secondary site (may be
asymptomatic or may produce non-specific early symptoms)
- Symptoms are caused by tissue damage and systemic effects caused by the virus and possibly
the immune system.

*The presence/absence of an envelope is the major structural determinant of the mode of viral
transmission Non-enveloped are more resistant

Viral Replication

Outcomes of viral infection:
- Productive infection: Progeny virions infect other cells
- Non-productive infection:
-Latent no new virus is produced, the cell survives and the viral genetic material persists
indefinitely in a latent state. Also known as lysogeny (bacteriophages); oncogenic
transformation (animal viruses).
-Abortive no new virus is produced, however, the virus genome does not persist in the cell
as a latent infection.
- Viruses that can establish either a productive or non-productive relationship with the host cell
are known as temperature viruses.

Internalization of the virus:
Is accomplished in one of three ways:
-fusion from without (surface fusion)
-pH independent
-ej. Herpesviruses, Paramyxoviruses (Measles virus), Retroviruses (HIV-1)
-receptor-mediated endocytosis (fusion from within)
-pH dependent; endosomes have acidic pH: induces a conformational change in the
envelope protein resulting in exposure of hydrophobic fusion domain, and this
facilitates the release of viral particle into cytoplasm
-ej. Orthomyxoviruses (influenza virus), Rhabdoviruses (rabies viruses), Togaviruses
(rubella virus)
-viral translocation

Viruses can be placed in one of seven following groups:
- I dsDNA viruses
- II ssDNA viruses
- III dsRNA viruses
- IV (+)ssRNA viruses
- V (-)ssRNA viruses
- VI ssRNA-RT viruses [(+) sense RNA with DNA intermediate in life-cycle]
- VII dsDNA-RT viruses

If viral replication takes place in nucleus:
- Viral genome and essential enzyme or protein must travel to nucleus
- This process is facilitated by nuclear localization signal (NLS)
- NLS are short and positively charged and facilitate entry through nuclear membrane
- Examples: DNA viruses (except poxviruses), retroviruses, influenza (orthomyxoviruses)

How do viruses make their mRNA?
- DNA viruses:
-DS simply transcribe the genomic DNA (nuclear: adenoviruses, papovaviruses,
Herpesviruses; cytoplasmic: poxviruses)
-SS occurs in nucleus, involves the formation of a DS which serves as a template for mRNA
synthesis (parvoviruses)

- RNA viruses:
-SS(+) use their genomic RNA as mRNA (picornaviruses)
-SS(-) make a (+) copy of their genome; the (+) copies are used as mRNA (paramyxoviruses,
orthomyxoviruses)
-Retroviruses transcribe from integrated proviral DNA (HIV)
-DS use (-) strand as template (reoviruses)


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