Possible Origin of Viruses Emman Perez Joey Torres II-Sampaguita

Virus? latin “virus” refers to poison and other noxious substances a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside living cells of organisms can infect ALL types of organisms regardless of size

Structure Very hard to see using normal microscope Most viruses have a diameter between 10-300 nanometres Have four main morphological virus types: Helical – spiral shaped Icosahedral – “near spherical” Envelope – envelope themselves in modified cell membranes Complex – possess extra structures such as protein tails and complex outer walls.

How did they start? Still unclear to most scientists Viruses do not leave any fossils They have to be untangled from their host cells 3 main Hypotheses: Regressive hypothesis Cellular origin hypothesis Coevolution hypothesis Regressive hypothesis  Viruses may have once been small cells that parasitised larger cells. Over time, genes not required by their parasitism were lost. The bacteria ricketssia and chlamydia are living cells that, like viruses, can reproduce only inside host cells. They lend support to this hypothesis, as their dependence on parasitism is likely to have caused the loss of genes that enabled them to survive outside a cell. This is also called the degeneracy hypothesis. Cellular origin hypothesis  Some viruses may have evolved from bits of DNA or RNA that "escaped" from the genes of a larger organism. The escaped DNA could have come from plasmids (pieces of naked DNA that can move between cells) or transposons (molecules of DNA that replicate and move around to different positions within the genes of the cell). Once called "jumping genes", transposons are examples of mobile genetic elements and could be the origin of some viruses. They were discovered in maize by Barbara McClintock in 1950. This is sometimes called the vagrancy hypothesis. Coevolution hypothesis  Viruses may have evolved from complex molecules of protein and nucleic acid at the same time as cells first appeared on earth and would have been dependent on cellular life for billions of years. Viroids are molecules of RNA that are not classified as viruses because they lack a protein coat. However, they have characteristics that are common to several viruses and are often called subviral agents. Viroids are important pathogens of plants.They do not code for proteins but interact with the host cell and use the host machinery for their replication. The hepatitis delta virus of humans has an RNA genome similar to viroids but has protein coat derived from hepatitis B virus and cannot produce one of its own. It is therefore a defective virus and cannot replicate without the help of hepatitis B virus. Similarly, thevirophage 'sputnik' is dependent on mimivirus, which infects the protozoan Acanthamoeba castellanii. These viruses that are dependent on the presence of other virus species in the host cell are called satellites and may represent evolutionary intermediates of viroids and viruses. Prions are infectious protein molecules that do not contain DNA or RNA. They cause an infection in sheep called scrapie and cattle bovine spongiform encelopathy("mad cow" disease). In humans they cause kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. They are able to replicate because some proteins can exist in two different shapes and the prion changes the normal shape of a host protein into the prion shape. This starts a chain reaction where each prion protein converts many host proteins into more prions, and these new prions then go on to convert even more protein into prions. Although they are fundamentally different from viruses and viroids, their discovery gives credence to the idea that viruses could have evolved from self-replicating molecules.

How do we spot viruses? Louis Pasteur was unable to find a causative agent for rabies Charles Chamberland Invented a filter which had pores smaller than bacteria Dmitry Ivanovsky Tobacco Mosaic Virus Martinus Beijerinck the filtered solution contained a new form of infectious agent

How to prevent viruses Vaccination Antiviral Drugs Cheap and effective way of preventing infections Improves immunity Antiviral Drugs Nucleoside analogues DNA Chain Termination

References http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-where-did-viruses-come-fr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus http://www.bookrags.com/research/evolutionary-origin-of-bacteria-and-wmi/