Description
In this four part short course, Steph Lunn introduces the molecular microbiology and genomics of viral pathogens, including:
- Why molecule biology concepts are relevant to understanding viral genomics
- What do viral genomes look like, what are viral replication strategies, and what information is encoded in a viral genome?
- Viral genome evolution: assumptions of viral genomes, reassortment, recombination, mutation, selection, and evolution
- Viral genome diversity: the diversity of viral genomes, sense of viral genomes, and the reproductive life cycle of a virus and how it can impact the genomic epidemiology, surveillance, and sequencing
Learning Objectives
Part I: Molecular Biology of Viral Genomics
- Briefly explain why molecule biology concepts are relevant to understanding viral genomics
- Define the dogma of molecular biology as it relates to the flow of genetic information
- Connect the concepts of replication, transcription, and translation as it relates to virus biology and the changes that we could see in the genome
- Describe features of DNA
- Discuss directionality and explain its importance and relevance to viral genomics
- Briefly summarize the processes of replication, transcription, and translation
Part II: Viral Genome Overview
- Discuss the type of genetic material viruses can be made of
- Give some examples of viral genome structures
- Explain how classifying viruses by replication strategies can be beneficial to understanding viral genomes
- Discuss what makes viral genomes compact and efficient
- Discuss how viral genomes are a biological parts list
- Provide some examples of information that is encoded in a viral genome and what information is not encoded in a viral genome
Part III: Viral Genome Evolution
- Discuss how genetic variation can occur in viruses
- Discuss the impact of reassortment on analyses
- Define mutation rate and why it’s difficult to quantify
- Discuss how genome sequences can allow us to infer an estimate of the substitution rate
- Briefly explain how evolution can change viral populations, and how viral genomes evolve in response to selective pressure
- Give examples of how viral genomes can adapt to host interactions
Part IV: Viral Genome Diversity
- Explain how viruses can be diverse, and why understanding the biology of the viral pathogen you’re working with impacts how you think about and use the data
- Explain how “sense” relates to viral genomes
- Distinguish between positive-sense RNA and negative-sense RNA
- Discuss some genomic elements of viral genomes
- Discuss how families of viral groups can be similar and different in genome organization
- Describe how the reproductive life cycle of a virus impact the changes we see in the genome
- Discuss how whole genome sequencing only manages to capture a fraction of viral diversity