Viral Agents Cause Disease

In recent years the field of virology has seen substantial growth as virus have now become a more widely researched subject. It was not too long ago relatively speaking that viruses were more or less an unknown entity, as many facts about viruses were unknown to the days researchers. Now however much more is known about what viruses are and how they work; more importantly it is known that viral agents are one of the leading causes of disease. Once it was established that they did in fact cause disease it became imperative to understand how viruses infected their hosts so that measures could be taken in order to cure and or prevent viral diseases; as knowledge of your target is pertinent in the quest for a countermeasure, a quick overview …show more content…
Viruses have actually been classified and divided into several different groups based on their method of reproducing and other factors such as structure and the presence or absence of a protein coat. The most well developed of these systems is the Baltimore Classification system. The way you target the virus can and does change depending on the type of virus there are many viral vaccines that have been extensively researched and developed; along with these vaccines have come antiviral agents and drugs. These antivirals and vaccines work so well along with the human immune system that several diseases have been reduced to mild nuisances while others like Smallpox have been completely eradicated in modern civilization, save secure lab samples. However there are diseases such as AIDS, Herpes, and Hepatitis that refused to be cured they only allow for one to stem the tide or control the symptoms; this phenomenon is the result of a persistent viral infection. Treatment of persistent viral infections is one of the most widely researched and discussed topics in modern virology.Despite the rampantly wide use of the word persistent for both there are actually two subcategories of persistent infections:latent and …show more content…
There has been research into the problem and several solutions have been suggested the most promising being endonucleases that are able to target the latent HIV. The first step of the process being to determine the necessary specificity of the endonuclease, and finding the ones that meet the specifications, it is thought that using nucleases that target at least 17 nucleotide base pairs is the most efficient way to ensure accuracy in targeting and avoiding any non-targeted binding of substrates. There are now three nucleases that fit those parameters that the scientific community has knowledge of: zinc finger nucleases, transcription activator-like effector nucleases, and homing endonucleases. Each of these substrates work in different ways so one must weigh all the benefits and drawbacks of using each substrate to determine the most prudent choice. Zinc finger nucleases have the ability to discern certain DNA triplets inside of the target area; when used in conjunction with the R.FokI restriction endonuclease, zinc finger nucleases can find and cleave the DNA at the present restriction sites. There are some inherent drawbacks that are present despite the positive showing, the library of zinc finger nucleases is still under construction so there are many pivotal DNA triplets that can not be used with this method, secondly