Viral Replication

How a virus hijacks your cell · Week 2
A virus cannot copy itself on its own. It has to break into one of your cells and turn that cell into a virus factory. Step through the six stages and watch one virus become many.

Inside the host cell

The big circle is your cell. Watch the virus attach, get in, copy itself, and burst back out.
Press Advance to run the cycle.

Each press of Advance moves the cycle one step. Watch the virus land on the outside of the cell, slip through the wall, shed its coat, copy its genes, build new particles, and break out again. Every new particle leaves ready to do the same thing to the next cell.

The 6 steps

HIV, a special case: HIV is a retrovirus that targets CD4 (T-helper) cells. Those are the very cells that coordinate immunity. As HIV destroys them, the immune system falls apart. That opens the door to opportunistic infections such as TB, oral thrush, and CNS toxoplasmosis. It also opens the door to cancers like Kaposi sarcoma. That stage is AIDS.