RE: How Malaria And Dengue Are Being Eradicated: Vector-borne Disease Control
Very interesting and well written article!
However I think you could have explained why in your images one can see the DNA of RNA viruses integrated into the DNA of the host cells. The reader may be surprised, because before you had correctly written that the genome of the retroviruses contains RNA instead of DNA. So where does their DNA suddenly come from? They use a special enzyme called reverse transcriptase which can synthesize DNA using the RNA genome as matrix. That explains where the virus DNA stems from ...
Later, when the enzymes of the host cell transcribe the integrated virus DNA, new virus RNA is synthesized.
I just "stole" the following image showing how an HI virus is doing his 'job' from my good old "Campbell: Biologie" book (German edition):
Thank you!! In all honesty, I didn't notice the diagram had DNA instead of RNA!! In the rush when I was looking around, I saw it was the same model but didn't make that connection I guess. Appreciate you taking the time to point this out and provide an explanation! Got to learn a little something myself, and just goes to show that I should take a bit more proofreading my stuff. :)