Peer Review

This material is part of a textbook called Medical Microbiology, 4th edition from 1996. It is Section 2, virology. It is part of NCBI and the national library of medicine. This is a comprehensive work which covers the details of virology. It is suitable for undergraduate students for an upper division course, such as virology, or for introductory courses such as microbiology and cell biology. It covers an introduction to virology, structure and classification of viruses, viral lifecycles, and goes into detail into the different types of viruses. Discoveries and updates past 1996 are not part of this work. This would be a good base to learn virology, though the instructor would need to add in newer discoveries and information. This would be an excellent resource to give to students to learn the basics about virus structure, lifecycle, and the general information for different types of viruses.

This is an Open Access Textbook provided by the National Library of Medicine.

This would be good background reading to prepare for a lecture or activity on viruses. It would be best assigned as homework or as a resource to be used on an assignment.

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• Explain how viruses are classified.
• Describe how a virus replicates inside a host cell.
• Compare and contrast the major viral families by viral structure, type of cell infected, and lifecycle.
• Describe how viruses are transmitted.
• Describe viral pathogenesis.
• List the difficulties in treating viral infections and creating antiviral medications.

Upper division college course on virology or immunology (with the caveat that much has changed since 1996 therefore newer viruses won’t be covered). Lower division course for an introduction to viruses (for microbiology or cell biology). I do not think this suitable for professional students (medical, veterinarian, or graduate) because important new viruses have been discovered that would not be part of this work.

Basic biology and organization of the cell. Understanding of the central dogma of molecular biology. Cell biology and genetics would be helpful, too, though not required.