- So a virus is a really tiny infectious particle,
and they cause disease in obviously humans,
but they can also infect tons of different other organisms,
like other mammals, fish, insects, and even bacteria.
- The simple goal of viruses is just to go inside a cell
and make many more of themselves.
And they achieve this in a very interesting fashion
by using different kinds of resources
that they can get from the cell.
And think about it this way: Let's say it's your house,
and you're in the house, but somebody else shows up
and starts using up all the resources in the house.
Like, they go to the refrigerator and eat your food.
Then they go someplace else and use like,
they go use your bathroom and they take a shower in there.
That's exactly what viruses are doing.
Viruses come into your house,
use all the resources you have to give,
and then make more of themselves and leave.
And leave your house in a very terrible state.
- So their whole purpose is to just keep replicating
and then actually like, come out of the cells
or just make them burst.
And then they just go and invade more cells.
So they just do this over and over again.
- So we in the lab do a variety of modifications
to a specific protein that the virus makes
to copy the viral genetic material
and make more copies of itself.
Hopefully by doing that,
we can understand how the protein functions
and hopefully we are able to block that protein
from functioning so that viruses cannot replicate
and make you sick.