Question: In your profile, you said under your work that you grow cells and then put a chemical on them which is similar to a virus. So what is this chemical and what virus is it simular to?
In our cells our own DNA exists as two strands of DNA wound together in a helix. When we make copies of our DNA into RNA, only one strand is copied. RNA is then used as a template to make proteins in our cell. We use the RNA instead of DNA for this, so if it gets damaged our original DNA copy is still able to make more good copies of RNA to keep making good copies of the protein.
Viruses also make RNA as part of their normal replication. Except when viruses make RNA they make it double-stranded. We have receptors in our cells which recognise the double stranded RNA as not our own and this signals to the rest of our cell we have an infection. The chemical I used on the cells I grow is similar to double stranded RNA called “Polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid” or in short “poly(I:C)”. This will activate the receptors that recognise an infection and give the same cell response.
So there isn’t one particular virus that poly(I:C) is similar to, its any virus which produces double stranded RNA.
Hi thebigcat! Great question!
In our cells our own DNA exists as two strands of DNA wound together in a helix. When we make copies of our DNA into RNA, only one strand is copied. RNA is then used as a template to make proteins in our cell. We use the RNA instead of DNA for this, so if it gets damaged our original DNA copy is still able to make more good copies of RNA to keep making good copies of the protein.
Viruses also make RNA as part of their normal replication. Except when viruses make RNA they make it double-stranded. We have receptors in our cells which recognise the double stranded RNA as not our own and this signals to the rest of our cell we have an infection. The chemical I used on the cells I grow is similar to double stranded RNA called “Polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid” or in short “poly(I:C)”. This will activate the receptors that recognise an infection and give the same cell response.
So there isn’t one particular virus that poly(I:C) is similar to, its any virus which produces double stranded RNA.
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