Sp 22 COVID Unit Assessment

This assignment is the culmination of your work over the last 6 weeks. You will need to turn in the answers to the Unit Assessment Problem Set Questions. 

• • • This will be open book, open notes AND you may work on it with anyone you would like - myself, fellow student, tutor, etc
    • BUT, your answers MUST be in your own words
    • therefore it will be submitted through Turnitin.com 

Here are the questions in one  place- but these were all embedded in the Study Guides.

C1. Why won't antibiotics work on viruses? ( to answer this question you will need to: a) describe the differences between bacteria and viruses and b) explain what antibiotics are and how they kill bacteria but not human cells)  (10 points) 

C2. Explain how a virus infects and reproduces inside a host cell. Use the following vocabulary, capsid, host membrane proteins, viral genetic material, replication, lysis (10  points) 

C3. Explain why a  mutation might have no impact, a small impact or a large impact on a protein's structure and function. In order to answer this question you will need to explain about DNA, mutations, mRNA, codons, amino acid side chains,  amino acid interactions, and protein folding. ( 10  points) 

C4. Explain the relationship between DNA sequence of a gene and the traits of an organism. You will need to include an explanation of genes, protein shape and function and phenotype (10  points) 

C5. Every year there are cold viruses that pass from one student to the next. The first time you are exposed to the virus, you get sick and it takes approximately 7-10 days to get better .Describe the process by which your  immune system fights off the cold virus during this first infection.  You will need to include information about pathogens, antigens, phagocytosis, antigen presenting cells, Helper T-cells, B-cells, Cytotoxic T-cells ( 20  points) 

C6. You pass the cold on to your younger siblings who get sick with the cold. Why don't you catch the cold back from them? What is protecting you? You will need to build off of your explanation above and discuss memory cells. (10   points) 

C7. Pick one of the following vaccines and explain how it activates memory cells. To answer this question you need to explain whether it is a mRNA, viral vector, subunit or inactivated vaccine. This in turn means that you will need to explain the basics of how those vaccine types work.  ( 20  points) 

• • • Moderna
    • Johnson & Johnson
    • Novovax
    • Sinopharm

C8. Pick ONE contributor to the increase in zoonotic diseases and explain the potential solutions to that problem.  Is there anything that you can do to contribute to this solution?  There should be 3 parts to your answer a) an explanation of the contributor (ie WHY does deforestation or wild life trafficking lead to an increase in zoonotic diseases) b) What are the different types of solutions for this contributor- be specific and complete! and c) Is there anyway that you could influence this issue- either through personal actions, education, political actions  etc. *(10  points) ( I found this great cartoon/visual summary of these issues from Politico)  Links to an external site.

C9 Explain why the larger the population of infected and unvaccinated people, the more likely it is for evolution of SARS-COV2 to evolve to be more transmissable? To answer this you need to include a discussion of mutations in viruses and natural selection.  (10 points)