Molecular Virology

1 Introduction.- 1.1 Historical development of molecular virology.- 1.2 What is a virus?.- 1.3 Titration of viruses.- 1.4 Virus-host interactions.- 2 The virion.- 2.1 Principles of virion construction.- 2.2 Special features of virion anatomy.- 2.2.1 Particles with cubic symmetry.- 2.2.2 Filamentous viruses with helical symmetry.- 2.2.3 Viruses with a lipid-containing membrane containing virus-induced proteins (envelope).- 2.2.4 Tailed bacteriophages.- 2.2.5 Poxviruses.- 2.3 Viral nucleic acids.- 2.4 The virion: function.- 2.4.1 Transmission of infection.- 2.4.2 Initiation of infection.- 2.4.3 Adsorption.- 2.4.4 Entry.- 2.4.5 Functions of the virion after entry - virion enzymes.- 3 The virus-infected cell.- 3.1 Transcription and translation in the virus-infected cell.- 3.1.1 Double-stranded DNA viruses (Group I).- 3.1.2 Single-stranded DNA viruses (Group II).- 3.1.3 Double-stranded RNA viruses (Group III).- 3.1.4 Single-stranded RNA viruses whose mRNA is identical in base sequence to virion RNA (Group IV).- 3.1.5 Single-stranded RNA viruses, genome complementary in sequence to mRNA (Group V).- 3.1.6 Single-stranded RNA genome with a DNA intermediate in their growth (Group VI).- 3.2 Post-translational modification of proteins.- 3.3 Genome replication.- 3.3.1 Replication of DNA genomes.- 3.3.2 Replication of RNA genomes.- 3.4 Virus assembly.- 3.5 Virus release.- 3.6 Temperate phage and lysogeny.- 3.6.1 The nature of prophage.- 3.6.2 The control of lysogeny.- 4 Virus genetics.- 4.1 Mutations.- 4.1.1 Specific mutations.- 4.1.2 General systems.- 4.2 Functional or complementation analysis.- 4.3 Fundamental studies in recombination.- 4.4 Chromosome mapping.- 4.4.1 Genetic maps.- 4.4.2 Physical maps and their relationship to genetic maps.- 4.5 Genetic recombination.- 5 Tumour virology.- 5.1 What is a tumour?.- 5.2 Causation of tumours.- 5.3 Papovaviruses.- 5.3.1 Transformation by polyoma virus and SV40.- 5.4 RNA tumour viruses.- 5.4.1 General properties.- 5.4.2 Growth and transformation.- 5.4.3 Reverse transcriptase.- 5.4.4 Genetics of RNA tumour viruses.- 5.5 Comparison of transformation by DNA and RNA tumour viruses; oncogene theory.- Suggestions for further reading.