Virology: Fundamentals and Applications is a book which provides basic understanding of viruses, enabling students across the field of life sciences to improve their knowledge of these biological enigmas.
The book will be useful to virologists, microbiologists, biotechnologists, students, teachers and researchers who can get to understand the principles of virus structure, genomes and their replication, techniques for studying viruses, and classification. Further, there is a series of chapters, each of which covers a specific virus class, with one or two well-studied viruses as prototypes of each family. The aim of this book is also to help the reader appreciate the scope of virology in the fields of interferons, vectors and cancer. The origin and evolution of viruses and emerging viruses are presented as separate chapters. The book concludes with a chapter on subviral agents.
With several viral outbreaks occurring globally, relevant information related to techniques for detection, the lifecycle of the viruses, vaccines and antivirals have been included in respective chapters. Moreover, each chapter is provided with figures, illustrations, tables and examples along with additional and interesting related information in boxes for better insight into the subject. The book is thus suitable for students who may be studying virology as just one among many facets of biology or medicine, as well as for those who intend to focus on the subject in depth.
Contents –
1. Introduction and Discovery of Viruses
2. Techniques Used in Virology
3. Structure of Viruses
4. Viral Genomes and Their Replication Strategies
5. Classification of Viruses
6. Positive-Sense Single-Stranded RNA Viruses
7. Negative-Sense Single- Stranded RNA Viruses
8. Double-Stranded RNA Viruses
9. Single-Stranded DNA Viruses
10. Double-Stranded DNA Viruses
11. Retroviruses
12. Hepadnaviruses: Reverse-Transcribing DNA Viruses
13. Bacteriophages
14. Viruses and Cancer
15. Viruses and Host Immune Response
16. Apoptosis and Viral Infection
17. Interferons
18. Antiviral Drugs
19. Viral Vaccines
20. Viral Vectors
21. Origin and Evolution of Viruses
22. Emerging Viruses
23. Subviral Agents
