This course describes how viruses interact with their hosts to infect, replicate, spread and cause disease. It looks at what controls the specificity of viruses for different host species and for different tissues within a host, also how this can lead to outbreaks and pandemics. It seeks to show how virus evolution is driven by the pressures to replicate and spread. Finally, it looks at how we can find antivirals and use them to control infections, distinguishing therapeutic approaches to prophylaxis by vaccination.
What Do Viruses Do And How Do We Control Them
This course is part of Foundations in Virology and Vaccinology Specialization
Instructor: Mike Skinner
Recommended experience
What you'll learn
Recognise how viruses cause infections
Recognise how vaccines prevent infections
Skills you'll gain
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There are 5 modules in this course
Viruses can cause mild, chronic and severe illness and even death. The clinical effects of viruses might occur days or weeks and even months or years after the initial infection, even causing lifelong negative influences on life and livelihood. The impact is experienced by individuals, families, communities, workplaces, healthcare systems, and society. When we have outbreaks, epidemics and even pandemics of virus disease the effects can be devastating. In this module, we will look at viruses and focus on how they cause disease, and what factors affect pathogenesis and virulence.
What's included
7 videos4 readings2 assignments1 discussion prompt
What are viruses doing inside host cells? How are they making copies of themselves? How are those copies getting out to infect other cells within us? And how are they getting out of us to infect others? In this module, we will look at the replication strategies of different groups of viruses in humans, known as their ‘lifestyles’.
What's included
5 videos3 readings3 assignments1 discussion prompt
Viruses are truly parasitic microorganisms. We have seen repeatedly how receptors, on host cells, and attachment proteins, on viruses, affect which cells a virus can enter. Once inside the cell, viruses still need the cell to supply the energy and all the raw materials they need to replicate themselves, as well as the environment and much of the machinery. In this module, we will explore the concepts of virus tissue and host range, and explore key questions around how viruses interact with host cells.
What's included
7 videos3 readings2 assignments
When outbreaks and pandemics start to happen, what do we hear about? It might be the symptoms. It will likely be the number of reported cases or fatalities. It might be what we are advised to do to avoid infection. And we also have a curiosity, or even a need, to find out where this virus came from. And in some cases, a major source of virus outbreaks has been other animals. In this module, we will look at virus threats from animals, known as ‘zoonotic infections’.
What's included
5 videos3 readings2 assignments2 discussion prompts
Antibiotics have kept us safe from bacterial infections all over the world. In situations and places that would previously have had significant mortality. However, they have their origins in, and deal with very different pathogens to antivirals. Simply because viruses have taken a completely different path and developed an incredibly effective strategy for causing viral infection in their host, making them much more difficult to treat. In this final module, we will look at the whole topic of how we prevent and control virus infections and outbreaks.
What's included
8 videos5 readings2 assignments
Instructor
Offered by
Recommended if you're interested in Basic Science
University of Colorado Boulder
University of California San Diego
University of California, Davis
Universiteit Leiden
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