Week 7 Lecture was taught by Mr Jay, our lecturer. The topic was methods of study of Viruses. It’s quite boring. We learned about the different way of isolating and cultivating virus. Methods include using animal and eggs as host usually by injection. This method is the first method for virus cultivation but in very inconvenient.
Obviously, plants were used to study viruses that affect plants. Now, tissue culture can be use. Cell tissue culture are grown in vitro. The are 2 types of cell culture. The primary cell line and continuous cell line. A primary cell line in made by taking cells from a animal part and growing it in vitro.Continuous cell lines are usually derived from primary cell lines. They are transformed/cancerous cell which can be sub-cultured indefinitely. After learning how to cultivate and isolate viruses, we learned about how to detect, identify and diagnose them. To detect and identify viruses using cell culture methods, we learned about cytopathic effects (CPE) and plaque assay.
Physical methods also can be used. They are:
- X-ray crystallography
- Electron microscopy
- Transmission EM
- Scanning EM
- STEM
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- Ultracentrifugation
- Purification
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Serological and Immunological methods such as:
- Haemagglutionation (HA)
- Haemagglutionation Inhibition (HI)
- Virus neutralisation
- Complement fixation
- Immunostaining
- Immunofluorescence
- Immuno-gold EM
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- Immunoprecipitation/ Immunoblot
- Enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay (ELISA)
Molecular Virology
After learning how to detect and identify them. He talked about how to analyse viral protein by methods of:
- PAGE / SDS PAGE
- Western blot
- Protein Sequencing
- X-ray crystallography
We also learnt how to analyse viral genomes using the methods he mentioned:
- Agarose gels
- Restriction analysis
- Sequencing
- Southern blot
- Northern blot
- PCR / RT-PCR
That was all for the 2 lectures. All about methods to study viruses.