Reference no: EM132751311

1.) In an experiment, you decide to infect BHK cells using your virus stock, assuming that it has a titre of 1x10^8 PFU/ml. You have 4 flasks of BHK cells, each possessing 5x10^5 cells.

a.) If you want every cell to be infected, how much virus will you use?

You colleague conducts a parallel experiment, but only want half their cells to be infected; so they work with an MOI of 0.5.

b.) How much virus did they use? What percentage of cells would you expect to be infected?

2.) You are given an aliquot of mouse antibodies against murine norovirus, which your colleague states has a high titre according to their ELISA assay. Their assay uses synthetically produced murine norovirus capsid protein immobilized on a 96 well plate, and detects binding of mouse antibodies indirectly by using a conjugated secondary antibody and measuring the colour change.

a.) You intubate the antibodies with your virus stock, then titrate this onto BHK cells. The calculated titre is identical to the no antibody control reaction: it is still 10^8 PFU/ml. How can you explain this apparent discrepancy between the two assays?

b.) Using specific examples, describe how the type of genome of particular viruses affect their mutation and evolution rates.

c.) Some viruses have both a latent and lytic infection phase. What is the advantage of a virus having this dual nature?

d.) Both influenza and HIV have RNA genomes. How do these genomes differ and how do they determine how the viruses replicate?