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Virus goes viral: an educational kit for virology classes

BACKGROUND: Viruses are the most numerous entities on Earth and have also been central to many episodes in the history of humankind. As the study of viruses progresses further and further, there are several limitations in transferring this knowledge to undergraduate and high school students. This de...

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Autores principales: de Souza, Gabriel Augusto Pires, Queiroz, Victória Fulgêncio, Lima, Maurício Teixeira, de Sousa Reis, Erik Vinicius, Coelho, Luiz Felipe Leomil, Abrahão, Jônatas Santos
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6995199/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32005257
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12985-020-1291-9
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author de Souza, Gabriel Augusto Pires
Queiroz, Victória Fulgêncio
Lima, Maurício Teixeira
de Sousa Reis, Erik Vinicius
Coelho, Luiz Felipe Leomil
Abrahão, Jônatas Santos
author_facet de Souza, Gabriel Augusto Pires
Queiroz, Victória Fulgêncio
Lima, Maurício Teixeira
de Sousa Reis, Erik Vinicius
Coelho, Luiz Felipe Leomil
Abrahão, Jônatas Santos
author_sort de Souza, Gabriel Augusto Pires
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Viruses are the most numerous entities on Earth and have also been central to many episodes in the history of humankind. As the study of viruses progresses further and further, there are several limitations in transferring this knowledge to undergraduate and high school students. This deficiency is due to the difficulty in designing hands-on lessons that allow students to better absorb content, given limited financial resources and facilities, as well as the difficulty of exploiting viral particles, due to their small dimensions. The development of tools for teaching virology is important to encourage educators to expand on the covered topics and connect them to recent findings. Discoveries, such as giant DNA viruses, have provided an opportunity to explore aspects of viral particles in ways never seen before. Coupling these novel findings with techniques already explored by classical virology, including visualization of cytopathic effects on permissive cells, may represent a new way for teaching virology. This work aimed to develop a slide microscope kit that explores giant virus particles and some aspects of animal virus interaction with cell lines, with the goal of providing an innovative approach to virology teaching. METHODS: Slides were produced by staining, with crystal violet, purified giant viruses and BSC-40 and Vero cells infected with viruses of the genera Orthopoxvirus, Flavivirus, and Alphavirus. Slides with amoebae infected with different species of giant viruses and stained with hemacolor reagents were also produced. RESULTS: Staining of the giant viruses allowed better visualization of the viral particles, and this technique highlights the diversity in morphology and sizes among them. Hemacolor staining enabled visualization of viral factories in amoebae, and the staining of infected BSC-40 and Vero cell monolayers with crystal violet highlights plaque-forming units. CONCLUSIONS: This kit was used in practical virology classes for the Biological Sciences course (UFMG, Brazil), and it will soon be made available at a low-cost for elementary school teachers in institutions that have microscopes. We hope this tool will foster an inspiring learning environment.
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spelling pubmed-69951992020-02-04 Virus goes viral: an educational kit for virology classes de Souza, Gabriel Augusto Pires Queiroz, Victória Fulgêncio Lima, Maurício Teixeira de Sousa Reis, Erik Vinicius Coelho, Luiz Felipe Leomil Abrahão, Jônatas Santos Virol J Research BACKGROUND: Viruses are the most numerous entities on Earth and have also been central to many episodes in the history of humankind. As the study of viruses progresses further and further, there are several limitations in transferring this knowledge to undergraduate and high school students. This deficiency is due to the difficulty in designing hands-on lessons that allow students to better absorb content, given limited financial resources and facilities, as well as the difficulty of exploiting viral particles, due to their small dimensions. The development of tools for teaching virology is important to encourage educators to expand on the covered topics and connect them to recent findings. Discoveries, such as giant DNA viruses, have provided an opportunity to explore aspects of viral particles in ways never seen before. Coupling these novel findings with techniques already explored by classical virology, including visualization of cytopathic effects on permissive cells, may represent a new way for teaching virology. This work aimed to develop a slide microscope kit that explores giant virus particles and some aspects of animal virus interaction with cell lines, with the goal of providing an innovative approach to virology teaching. METHODS: Slides were produced by staining, with crystal violet, purified giant viruses and BSC-40 and Vero cells infected with viruses of the genera Orthopoxvirus, Flavivirus, and Alphavirus. Slides with amoebae infected with different species of giant viruses and stained with hemacolor reagents were also produced. RESULTS: Staining of the giant viruses allowed better visualization of the viral particles, and this technique highlights the diversity in morphology and sizes among them. Hemacolor staining enabled visualization of viral factories in amoebae, and the staining of infected BSC-40 and Vero cell monolayers with crystal violet highlights plaque-forming units. CONCLUSIONS: This kit was used in practical virology classes for the Biological Sciences course (UFMG, Brazil), and it will soon be made available at a low-cost for elementary school teachers in institutions that have microscopes. We hope this tool will foster an inspiring learning environment. BioMed Central 2020-01-31 /pmc/articles/PMC6995199/ /pubmed/32005257 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12985-020-1291-9 Text en © The Author(s). 2020 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
de Souza, Gabriel Augusto Pires
Queiroz, Victória Fulgêncio
Lima, Maurício Teixeira
de Sousa Reis, Erik Vinicius
Coelho, Luiz Felipe Leomil
Abrahão, Jônatas Santos
Virus goes viral: an educational kit for virology classes
title Virus goes viral: an educational kit for virology classes
title_full Virus goes viral: an educational kit for virology classes
title_fullStr Virus goes viral: an educational kit for virology classes
title_full_unstemmed Virus goes viral: an educational kit for virology classes
title_short Virus goes viral: an educational kit for virology classes
title_sort virus goes viral: an educational kit for virology classes
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6995199/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32005257
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12985-020-1291-9
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