Welcome back! Glad you decided to join me again in learning more about the fascinating life of the HIV virus! As we lasted talked in my blog post #1, I had the great pleasure of visiting the CDC for the first time and was able to find a microbe I was extremely interested in: the Human immunodeficiencyVirus also known as HIV which leads to AIDS. The CDC had a whole wall dedicated to AIDS, but I feel it is important to mention what leads to the it! HIV is a virus that harms a person’s immune system by attacking cells that are put in place to fight foreign
invaders like it. HIV is a virus that approximately 100 nanometers in diameter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_genome_of_HIV) and comes in a cone-like shape (which is depicted below). Giving that this is a virus and viruses are acelluar (S/O to week 13 lecture on virus structure and replication for teaching that) This virus does have an enveloped so its considered an enveloped virus and the capsid structure is in a cone-like structure. HIV has 9 encoding genes that are unique to this virus, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_genome_of_HIV) The way this virus works is by attaching to a host cell which is how they move through the body initially. HIV has a very interesting structure because it has both an envelope and a capsid protecting the RNA. But more importantly, in order for this virus to bind to human cells, it needs those receptors on the envelope. Some other important parts of the virus is proteins like protease, tat and reverse transcriptase that aid in allowing this virus to do it’s job efficiently.
Lastly, I learn best visually so I found a couple interesting videos that help me really put together what HIV is and does.
^This one was very monotoned and a bit dull but it helps carry the message home!
These are links where I found the pictures attached
http://(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_genome_of_HIV)