Ch 19: Virus Structure & Life Cycle for the MCAT: Tutoring Solution
About This Chapter
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- Begin your review or other MCAT preparation work.
- Identify the virus structure and life cycle concepts that you're stuck on.
- Find fun videos on the topics you need to understand.
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This chapter of our MCAT prep tutoring solution will benefit any student who is trying to review virus structure and life cycle and earn acceptable scores. This resource can help students including those who:
- Struggle with understanding classification of viruses, virus mutation, the life cycle of a virus or any other virus structure and life cycle topic
- Have limited time for studying
- Want a cost effective way to supplement their MCAT preparation
- Prefer learning MCAT topics visually
- Find themselves struggling with the virus structure and life cycle portion of their review
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- Want to get ahead in their MCAT preparation
- Don't have access to MCAT review materials
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- Learn at Your Pace: You can pause and rewatch lessons as often as you'd like, until you master the material.
Learning objectives:
- Review the composition of viruses.
- Explore the various shapes viruses can have.
- Find out how viruses are classified.
- Get an overview of replication of DNA and RNA viruses.
- Examine how viruses mutate.
- Brush up on the life cycle of a virus.
- Learn about bacteriophages.
- Find out about mechanisms and diseases of the retroviridae virus family, including AIDS.

1. What Are Viruses? - Definition, Structure & Function
In this lesson, you'll learn some historical facts about viruses and the material they are composed of. Find out more as we review the capsid, nucleic acids, the viral envelope, viruses, virions, bacteriophages and virology.

2. Shapes of a Virus: Helical, Icosahedral, Prolate, Complex & Enveloped
Learn about the different shapes viruses can have, such as helical, icosahedral, prolate, complex and enveloped. Find out why one shape is particularly useful from an energetic standpoint.

3. Classification of Viruses: Viral Genome and Replication Scheme
Find out how viruses are classified based on their being double-stranded, single-stranded, positive-sense, negative-sense, or by having something called reverse transcriptase.

4. Replication of DNA Viruses
This lesson will give you a basic overview of how DNA viruses replicate inside of a host cell. We will cover the entry, integration, replication and release of DNA viruses.

5. Replication of RNA Viruses
This lesson will give you a basic overview of how different types of RNA viruses replicate inside of an animal cell. We will cover the essence of being double-stranded and retroviruses, as well as positive-and negative-sense RNA viruses.

6. How Viruses Mutate: Antigenic Drift and Antigenic Shift
This lesson will discuss the major ways by which viruses, notably the flu virus, mutates. We will talk about recombination, reassortment, antigenic drift, antigenic shift, and more!

7. The Life Cycle of a Virus: How Viruses Live, Attack & Replicate
Find out how viruses infect and replicate as we explore the important steps of the virus life cycle, including attachment, uncoating, penetration, replication, and release, as well as the lysogenic and lytic cycles.

8. Viruses: Bacteriophage Lytic and Lysogenic Cycles
Viruses are generally not only our enemy but also the enemy of many other organisms. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect specific bacteria. In this lesson, we'll discuss their basic structure and infection cycle.

9. HIV and AIDS: Mechanisms and Diseases of the Retroviridae Virus Family
Learn about one of the most famous viruses in the world: HIV. We'll also delve into a condition you've almost certainly heard of: AIDS. Finally, we'll discuss the mechanisms of how viruses in this family cause so much damage and if there's anything you can do about it.

10. What Is an Acellular Organism? - Definition & Examples
Acellular means 'cell free.' Since life is made out of cells, how can an organism exist without them? Viruses are small, acellular microbes in the gray area between a living and nonliving organism. Learn more about them in this lesson.
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