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This is an introductory upper-level undergraduate course. Participants are expected to have a good understanding of cell biology, biochemistry, and microbiology. The course will deal comprehensively with fundamental properties of viruses, the different ways in which viruses replicate and cause disease, and experimental methods in virology. The majority of the course will be devoted to animal viruses, particularly those which cause human disease, but consideration is also given to bacteriophages and plant viruses. | ||||||||
| Course textbook: | ||||||||
| There is no required course textbook. BasicVirology is available at the Bookstore. In addition, considerable lecture material will be drawn from: Fields Virology, 5th edition, Knipe et al., 2007, ISBN-13: 978-0-7817-6060-7 ICTV Virus Taxonomy 8th Report, Fauquet et al., 2005, ISBN 0-12-249951-4 | ||||||||
| Course evaluation to be based upon: | ||||||||
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| Research Paper | ||||||||
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Research papers consist of a written essay (about 5000 words, excluding references and essential figures/tables). The object of the research topic is for each student to choose a complex (or controversial) aspect of contemporary virology and, through research of the topic, gain an understanding of both the topic area, and the ways in which contemporary virological research is conducted and interpreted. The research paper should consist of a fairly extensive Introduction to introduce the reader to the topic, followed by an analysis of a single research article, chosen from a reputable journal (ex. Cell, Nature, Science, Journal of Virology, Virology), and published during 2008 or 2009. The typed double-spaced essays are due nbsp; Late papers will still be accepted, but a penalty of 2 points per day late will be imposed (out of the 30 paper is worth). The essay should take the form of a published research paper, with Introduction, indicating the source of the paper you are critiquing (plus authors’ goals), sufficient (but abbreviated) Methods to enable the reader to understand how experiments were performed, Results/Discussion, and References. Do not include the paper you are critiquing, but be sure to include appropriate Tables/Figures (plus appropriate citations!) Your paper should not be a reiteration of text that appears in the journal article. That constitutes plagiarism. In addition, representative important experimental evidence that authors use to support interpretations should be carefully explained and evaluated. | ||||||||
| Plagiarism:To plagiarize is to take ideas or words of another person and pass them off as one's own. In short, it is stealing something intangible rather than an object. Obviously it is not necessary to state the source of well known or easily verifiable facts, but students are expected to acknowledge the sources of ideas and expressions they use in their written work, whether quoted directly or paraphrased. This applies to diagrams, statistical tables and the like, as well as to written material, and materials or information from Internet sources." (University of Manitoba Calendar) | ||||||||
| Some Suggested Research Paper Topics | ||||||||
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| Course Schedule Virology MBIO 4410 |