BIOL-UA.12: Principles of Biology II Spring 2014 Recitation ee!

4 For this week, you will work on the following cases. You will answer the questions below, plus additional questions that your instructor will provide. Prepare by reviewing the relevant sections of your textbook and lecture notes. Intro"#ction In the lecture, you have encountered several agents of infectious diseases: bacteria, prions, protists, viroids, and viruses. hat are the differences a!ong these different pathogens" ithin each of bacteria, protists, and viruses, what are the !a#or groups, and what are the differences a!ong these groups" $ase % 1 I!agine that you are a $ritish physician who #ust graduated fro! %edical &chool at 'a!bridge (niversity in the early)*+,-s .!eaning that you won/t have the luxury of using 012 sequencing for diagnostic purposes3. You e!brace the opportunity of beco!ing a physician on the cruise ship 4Princess %argaret5 touring the islands of the Indian 6cean .47olly good8 9et/s discover the world853. (nfortunately, shortly after leaving the 'o!oros Islands, !any passengers fall ill, !ost likely as the result of a food)borne infection. You quickly reali:e that the people that ate the exotic Italian delicacy 4tira!isu5 are the ones that beca!e sick, while those that ate the 4spotted dick5 were fine. Your first reaction is to take a sa!ple fro! each dish and run a series of tests with your !icroscope and Petri dishes. Fro! the tira!isu sa!ples, you !anage to isolate a bacterial colony that you suspect is the cause of the infection. Fro! the picture shown below .taken fro! your own !icroscope3: a3 describe the shape of the organis!; b3 what is the approxi!ate si:e of the organis! .in !icro!eters3 considering that you are using a regular light !icroscope providing *---x !agnification. <ow does this co!pare to the si:e of viruses or protists"

You will conduct additional tests that involve =ra! staining and spores; review these topics. $ase % 2 2 couple of years later, you have grown tired of spending so !uch ti!e on a boat. You decide to settle down in &ingapore, where you are now working at one of the area/s hospitals. 6ne day,

you hear that the cruise ship 4Princess %argaret5 has been quarantined in the &ingapore harbor due to illness of half of the crew and !ost of the passengers. 2 large nu!ber of sa!ples are sent to your laboratory for diagnostic. >his ti!e you are unable to isolate a bacterial pathogen and you are left wondering what the nature of the infectious agent could be. &uddenly, you re!e!ber that 7i! atson, this eccentric 2!erican chap that you !et in a pub in 'a!bridge, was always blabbing about a 012 helix and the tobacco !osaic virus that he was studying when he was a Ph0 student in the (&2. You decide to use an electron !icroscope instead of your regular light !icroscope and observe the structures below; what are they" hat !edical interventions are possible"

$ase % & 2 few years later, you have !oved again. 1ow, you are living in ?enya, still working in a hospital laboratory. You are analy:ing a blood sa!ple fro! a patient suffering fro! a severe illness. You discover the presence of a parasitic protist in the sa!ple. You quickly diagnose that the patient is suffering fro! !alaria, but your supervisor is not convinced clai!ing that his pri!ary diagnosis suggests sleeping sickness. <ow can you distinguish between the two" $ase % 4 In the late)*+@-s, after several decades traveling around the world, you have decided to co!e back to the (? to retire. Your nephew, who is a veterinarian, is baffled by an increase in a rare for! of neurological disease in cattle. You have long discussions with hi! and suspect that the disease !ay be caused by an infectious agent. &ince you have ti!e on your hands, you read everything you can on the epide!ic. 6ne day, you get an opportunity to take a look at electron !icrographs of brain tissues that were taken by a laboratory that studied cows that died of the disease. You say, 4>his is strange, it doesn/t look like a virus or a bacteriu! is causing these aggregates that are quite apparent in so!e of the cells5. >hen, you re!e!ber a discussion that you had with an older colleague, when you were in &ingapore. <e was co!ing back fro! Papua 1ew =uinea and was telling you about an intriguing neurological disease that was affecting a tribe there. >he sy!pto!s of that disease were quite si!ilar to the ones affecting the cows. You had read a few years later that the trans!ission !ay have been caused by the funeral rites of that tribe, because the relatives of the deceased consu!ed the body of the deceased .i.e., a for! of ritual cannibalis!3. You are still pu::led though: cows don/t eat cow !eat .or are you !issing so!ething"3. hat type of infectious agent is to bla!e here"