Hiv Summary; Case Study Follow Up

Tanysha Tennassee

December 14, 2012

AP BIOLOGY

Period 6&7

HIV SUMMARY; CASE STUDY FOLLOW UP

HIV is a virus that that attacks your T-Helper cells to try to disarm and then reproduce and spread. By attacking the T-Helper cells, it makes the levels of CD4 low, it also attacks the microphages and dendritic. The way this happens is by about six different processes. First, the HIV virus binds with the t-helper cells, and then fuses with it. Then, an HIV enzyme called reverse transcriptase converts the single-stranded HIV RNA to double-stranded HIV DNA. After this occurs, the DNA from the HIV infects the nucleus. After this, the DNA that is now in the nucleus causes the cell to reproduce more of the HIV proteins. After this occurs, the new virus that is produced buds off from the original cell and the whole process occurs again. Because if this, it cannot tell the cytotoxic T-Cells that there is anything wrong or foreign in the body. When this happens the HIV virus spreads faster by reproduction.

When this happens, the body becomes more immune to getting infected by other diseases because of the lower T-Helper cells. This happens because since there is a lower amount of t-helper cells, any other virus that enters the body is more prone to getting reproduced without being discovered. Usually it is the other viruses that have entered the body that is a result of the death of people that also have the HIV virus. An example of this is the pneumonia virus. That is one of the number one things that end up killing people when they pass away and they have HIV.

In the first experiment that was performed by Paxton, he was trying to figure out what the difference was in the people that where prone to getting the HIV virus and the people that somehow built up an immunity to it. In the