You are a pathologist in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. You have been hearing about an increase in patients suffering from rapid neurodegeneration, muscle stiffness, and hallucinations from eating infected beef. Upon histological evaluation of one of these patients, you notice spongelike holes in the brain tissue sample and isolate a prion. What could this prion have caused in the patients?

Case study B A 62-year-old man came to the emergency room with right facial weakness. He awoke in the morning with a “funny feeling” in his right eye and thought he might have conjunctivitis. He looked in the mirror and noticed his right face was drooping a little. He also thought his speech sounded slightly slurred, so he called his wife to confirm this. She told him to go to the emergency room and he complied. During examination he demonstrated intact corneal reflex (blink in response to touching the cornea) on both sides. His right eyebrow was slightly depressed, but his right lower face showed significant delay of movements with smile. Taste on both sides of the anterior tongue was intact in response to mustard or jam on a swab. Hearing was normal and he had a normal gag reflex with symmetrical palatal elevation. His speech sounded mildly slurred, but the patient reported that it sounded better than earlier in the day. Tongue protrusion deviated slightly to the right. Strength testing in the limbs revealed mild weakness in the right hand. All tendon reflexes (biceps, patellar, Achilles) were normal and there were no frontal release signs. 

Case study A, Question 1 Consider the following symptoms:  Difficulty writing by hand and with typing Blunted affect Bilateral bradykinesia For each of the symptoms above, state which of the six neuromotor components from class could cause it if damaged (nerves, direct motor pathway, indirect motor pathway, excitatory pathway, inhibitory pathway, cerebellum). Briefly justify your response, making reference to what that component does. Hint: some symptoms could result from damage to multiple components! Discuss ALL neuromotor components that could produce that symptom.  Note: some of these symptoms are a intentionally a bit vague! This is common, especially when patients describe their own symptoms. 

Persistent infections can last from a few weeks to the remainder of the host’s life 

In an attempt to develop a new antiviral drug, which of the following parts of the virus life cycle be best to target to make the virus less infectious?

Viruses are always bigger than animal cells and bacteria.

Nous (3) (nager) tranquillement dans la mer. 

In the life cycle of dsDNA viruses, the virus’ DNA is replicated in the ___ of the host cell by the host’s own DNA polymerase most of the time.

Avant, tu (connaître) bien ton placard. Depuis, tu (acheter) trop de vêtements et de chaussures.

Cells infected by oncogenic viruses are said to be “transformed”. What might we expect from these transformed cells?