A virus (from the Latin virus meaning toxin or poison) is a sub-microscopic infectious agent that is unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell. Virus diseases inflict a heavy illness and economic burden on humans and animals and can devastate agricultural crops. Each viral particle, or virion, consists of genetic material, DNA or RNA, within a protective protein coat called a capsid. Their shape varies from simple helical and icosahedral (polyhedral or near-spherical) forms, to more complex structures with tails or an envelope. Viruses infect cellular forms of life and are grouped into animal, plant and bacterial viruses.
It has been argued whether viruses are living organisms. Some consider them non-living as they do not meet the criteria of the definition of life. For example, unlike most organisms, viruses do not have cells. However, viruses have genes and evolve by natural selection. They have been described as organisms at the edge of life. Viral infections in human as well as animal hosts, usually result in an immune response and disease. Often, a virus is completely eliminated by the immune system. Antibiotics have no effect on viruses, but antiviral drugs have been developed to treat life-threatening infections. Vaccines that produce lifelong immunity can prevent virus infections.
Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet OM, AK, KBE ( 3 September 1899 – 31 August 1985), usually known as Macfarlane or Mac Burnet, was an Australian virologist best known for his contributions to immunology. Burnet received his M.D. from the University of Melbourne in 1924, and his PhD from the University of London in 1928. He went on to conduct pioneering research on bacteriophages and viruses at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, and served as director of the Institute from 1944 to 1965. His virology research resulted in significant discoveries concerning their nature and replication and their interaction with the immune system.
From the mid-1950s, he worked extensively in immunology and was a major contributor to the theory of clonal selection, which explains how lymphocytes target antigens for destruction. Burnet and Peter Medawar were co-recipients of the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for demonstrating acquired immune tolerance. This research provided the experimental basis for inducing immune tolerance, the platform for developing methods of transplanting solid organs.
Burnet left the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in 1965, he continued to work at the University of Melbourne until his official retirement in 1978. During his working life he wrote 31 books and monographs and more than 500 scientific papers. Burnet played an active role in the development of public policy for the medical sciences in Australia and was a founding member, and later the president, of the Australian Academy of Science. He was the most highly decorated and honoured scientist to have worked in Australia. [1] For his contributions to Australian science, he was made the first Australian of the Year in 1960, and in 1978 a Knight of the Order of Australia. He was recognised internationally for his achievements: in addition to the Nobel, he received the Lasker Award and the Royal and Copley Medals from the Royal Society, honorary doctorates, and distinguished service honours from the Commonwealth and Japan.
sequence alignment,
natural selection,
invasive species
Louis Pasteur,
Anton van Leeuwenhoek,
Charles Darwin,
Alfred Russel Wallace,
Thomas Huxley,
Ronald Aylmer Fisher,
Sewall Wright,
JBS Haldane,
Ernst Mayr,
August Weismann,
Theodosius Dobzhansky,
Hermann Joseph Muller,
Thomas Hunt Morgan,
Carolus Linnaeus,
Niko Tinbergen,
Julian Huxley,
James Watson,
Francis Crick,
Lynn Margulis,
Rosalind Franklin,
Barbara McClintock,
Jane Goodall,
Camillo Golgi,
Theodor Schwann,
Gregor Mendel,
Ernst Haeckel,
Ludwig von Bertalanffy,
Robert Koch,
C. H. Waddington (once I've worked on it a bit more -
Samsara)
Thomas Malthus
John Forbes Nash
John Maynard Smith
Francis Galton
Carl Djerassi,
Peter Medawar,
Matthew Meselson
Sydney Brenner
Kary Mullis,
François Jacob,
Jacques Monod,
Louis Agassiz,
Richard Dawkins (cough, cough, Richard *cough*? -
Samsara),
George Ledyard Stebbins,
Edward Jenner,
Norman Borlaug