Germs Research Paper

Germs, such as bacteria and viruses sometimes enter the body. When this happens, the bacteria or virus attack the body's cells and begin to multiply. When this happens, it is known as an infection which in turn make people ill. Our body uses its immune system to fight of the infection that has began spreading in the body.
Vaccines are used to help our immune system develop an immunity by imitating the infection. This means that there is a small amount of the bacteria or virus introduced to the body but it does not make the person ill. This causes the immune system to create t-lymphocyttes and b-lymphocytes, white blood cells that attack cells that have been infected, and also antibodies. An antibody is a protein that is produced by the immune system when it has found a harmful substance known as an antigen. An antigen is
important to creating a vaccine becuase it is used to help create the vaccine so that the body can build an immunity to it. At times, a vaccine can cause minor symptoms for the person receiving it. This can include a fever or headache and is normal and to be expected because the body is trying to build an immunity to the bacteria or virus.
Soon, the infection that was imitated by the vaccine will go away. Once it is gone, it leaves the immune system with t-lymphocytes as well as b-lymphocytes that are known as memory cells. Although it takes a few weeks for the body to produce these cells, they are used to help fight off that infection in the future. It is still possible for a person to contract the disease right before or after the vaccine has been administered.
There are five different types of vaccines available. The first is a live attenuated vaccine. This vaccine contains the live virus that is weakened down so that it does not cause a serious disease in a person with a healthy immune system. The second is an inactive vaccine. This vaccine does not contain a live version of the virus. Instead, it is made my inactivating the virus while making the vaccine. The third is a toxoid vaccine. This virus will prevent diseases that are caused by bacteria that produces toxins. The fourth is a subunit vaccine. This vaccine is made up of only parts of the virus or bacteria rather than the entire virus or bacteria. The fifth is a conjugate vaccine. This vaccine is used to fight a bacteria that is different from the others. The bacteria that it is trying to fight has an outer couating of a sugar-like substance that is called polysaccharides. Because of the make up of the coating of the antigen, it is easy to be disquised, making it hard for a young child's immune system to find and respond to.
AIDS, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, is caused by HIV, human immunodeficiency virus.
HIV works by weakening the immune system. HIV is spread in many ways. This can include having unprotected sex, receiving transfussions of unscreened blood, contaminated needles, and from a mother to her child during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding. Once a person is infected with HIV, they have the virus for life. An infected person may not know that they are infected and look and feel healthy for many years, although they can still transmit the virus to others unknowingly. The only way that a person can find out for certain if they have the virus or not is through a lab test that searches for the virus. A person can be given antiretroviral treatments to slow down the process of the HIV infection. The medications given during antiretroviral treatments are expensive and not available to many people in the developing world. When a person is left untreated, there is about eight to ten years between the time of infection and the virus developing into AIDS. Once the virus develops into AIDS, many people do not live longer than two years after it has
onset.
HIV can enter a person's body through infected blood, semen, or vaginal fluid. The virus is not capable of replicting on its own and needs the cells in the body in order to reproduce. Once the virus has entered the body, it finds cells that it can use to replicate as an intracelluar parasite. From there, the virus gets stronger while making the immune system weaker.
If I were to work on developing a vaccine for HIV, I would begin by finding a way to destroy the envelope protein. The envelope protein is on the surface of the viral particle. It contains two parts, the gp120 and gp41. The gp120 is on the outside of the particle and is the first part of the viral particle that makes contact with receptors on the cell that the virus is targeting. The gp41 then spans the viral membrane, causes the gp120 to anchor onto the cell, and causes the viral particle and the healthy cell to fuse together. Once the envelope protein is destroyed, the virus cannot be spread. From there, I would find a way to have the viral membrane entered without destroying it. Once the vaccine has entered the through the viral membrane and enters the viral particle, it can begin eating away at the capsid, which is used to replicate the cell, then the nucleocapsid, which is a protein that coats the viral RNA, and then finally, destroy the two copies to the viral RNA that contains all of the information that codes all of the viral proteins, leaving the viral particle dead.