Next week in Microbiology, we will be starting to look at viruses. Presented here, is a video illustrating the mechanism by which one virus enters the cell. This video may also be of interest to my General Biology students because of the illustration of receptor-mediated endocytosis, one of the methods by which materials may enter the cell.

Of note in this video is the fact that viral attachment and entry is mediated by a very specific interaction of proteins on the membrane of the virus as well as that of the host cell. These are examples of cell recognition membrane proteins. It is also worth mentioning that once the virus enters the cell, it must still escape the endocytic membrane if it is to get access to cellular tools such as ribosomes, amino acids, etc. required for manufacturing new viruses.

http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/media/2010_dengue_virus-sm.mov