2 thoughts on “Virology lecture #13: Host defense”

  1. Pritesh

    Does an infected cell has to die eventually ?? I mean can a virus infected cell recover and work as a normal ??

  2. Protogonus

    It is commonly thought that viruses are all pathogens but one expert (Prof. L. Villarreal, writing in ’Scientific American,’ August 2008) says this:”A possible surprise to most physicians, and perhaps to most evolutionary biologists as well, is that most known viruses are persistent and innocuous, not pathogenic. They take up residence in cells, where they may remain dormant for long periods or take advantage of the cells’ replication apparatus to reproduce at a slow and steady rate. These viruses have developed many clever ways to avoid detection by the host immune system–essentially every step in the immune process can be altered or controlled by various genes found in one virus or another.”Why all types of organisms, and indeed why every INDIVIDUAL creature everywhere, unwillingly is forced to incorporate these biochemical parasites inside themselves, which evade the immune system and act as little random biochemical programs transferring genomic material around and repositioning it at will, is not explained, and indeed this would not appear to be reasonable, as reproducing them takes energy and reduces the efficiency of the cells in which they reside. 

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