Viruses can reproduce only within a host cell. The parental virus (virion) gives rise to numerous progeny, usually genetically and structurally identical to the parent virus. The actions of the virus depend both on its destructive tendencies toward a specific host cell and on environmental conditions. In the vegetative cycle of viral infection, multiplication of progeny viruses can be rapid. This cycle of infection often results in the death of the cell and the release of many virus progeny. Certain viruses, particularly bacteriophages, are called temperate (or latent) because the infection does not immediately result in cell death. The viral genetic material remains dormant or is actually integrated into the genome of the host cell. Cells infected with temperate viruses are called lysogenic because the cells tend to be broken down when they encounter some chemical or physical factor, such as ultraviolet light. In addition, many animal and plant viruses, the genetic information of which is not integrated into the host DNA, may lie dormant in tissues for long periods of time without causing much, if any, tissue damage. Viral infection does not always result in cell death or tissue injury; in fact, most viruses lie dormant in tissue without ever causing pathological effects, or they do so only under other, often environmental, provocations.
Although the reproductive pathways of different viruses vary considerably, there are certain basic principles and a particular series of events in the cycle of infection for most, if not all, viruses. The first step in the cycle of infection is that the invading parental virus (virion) must attach to the surface of the host cell (adsorption). In the second step, the intact virion either penetrates the outer membrane and enters the cell’s interior (cytoplasm) or injects the genetic material of the virus into the interior of the cell while the protein capsid (and envelope, if present) remains at the cell surface. In the case of whole-virion penetration, a subsequent process (uncoating) liberates the genetic material from the capsid and envelope, if present. In either case, the viral genetic material cannot begin to synthesize protein until it has emerged from the capsid or envelope.
Certain bacterial viruses, such as the T4 bacteriophage, have evolved an elaborate process of infection: following adsorption and firm attachment of the virus’s tail to the bacterium surface by means of proteinaceous “pins,” the musclelike tail contracts, and the tail plug penetrates the cell wall and underlying membrane and injects virus (phage) DNA into the cell. Other bacteriophages penetrate the cell membrane by different means, such as injecting the nucleic acid through the male (sex) pili of the bacterium. In all bacterial viruses, penetration transmits the viral nucleic acid through a rigid bacterial cell wall.
Plant cells also have rigid cell walls, which plant viruses cannot ordinarily penetrate. Plant viruses, however, have not evolved their own systems for injecting nucleic acids into host cells, and so they are transmitted by the proboscis of insects that feed on plants. In the laboratory, plant viruses penetrate plant cells if the cell walls have been abraded with sandpaper or if cell protoplasts (plasma membrane, cytoplasm, and nucleus) are devoid of walls.
Penetration of animal cells by viruses involves different processes, because animal cells are enclosed not by walls but by a flexible lipoprotein bilayer membrane. Most animal viruses, whether or not they are encased in lipid envelopes, penetrate cells in an intact form by a process called endocytosis. The membrane invaginates and engulfs a virus particle adsorbed to a cell, usually in an area of the membrane called a coated pit, which is lined by a special protein known as clathrin. As the coated pit invaginates, it is pinched off in the cytoplasm to form a coated vesicle. The coated vesicle fuses with cytoplasmic endosomes (membrane-enclosed vesicles) and then with cell organelles called lysosomes, which are membrane-enclosed vesicles containing enzymes. In an acidic environment, the membrane of an enveloped virus fuses with the endosome membrane, and the viral nucleocapsid is released into the cytoplasm. Nonenveloped viruses presumably undergo a similar process, by which the protein capsid is degraded, releasing the naked viral nucleic acid into the cytoplasm.
The order of the stages of viral replication that follow the uncoating of the genome varies for different virus classes. For many virus families the third step in the cycle of infection is transcription of the genome of the virus to produce viral mRNA, followed by the fourth step, translation of viral mRNA into proteins. For those viruses in which the genomic nucleic acid is an RNA that can serve as a messenger (i.e., positive-strand RNA viruses), the third step is the translation of the RNA to form viral proteins; some of these newly synthesized viral proteins are enzymes that synthesize nucleic acids (polymerases), which carry out a fourth step, the transcription of more mRNA from the viral genome. For the more complicated DNA viruses, such as adenoviruses and herpesviruses, some regions of the genome synthesize “early” mRNAs, which are translated into polymerases that initiate the transcription of “late” regions of the DNA into mRNAs, which are then translated into structural proteins.
Regardless of how the third and fourth steps proceed, the fifth step in the cycle of infection is replication (reproduction of the parental genome to make progeny genomes). The sixth step is the assembly of the newly replicated progeny genomes with structural proteins to make fully formed progeny virions. The seventh and last step is the release of progeny virions by lysis of the host cell through the process of either extrusion or budding, depending on the nature of the virus. In a host animal or cell culture, this seven-step process may be repeated many times; the progeny virions released from the original site of infection are then transmitted to other sites or to other individuals.
For most animal and plant RNA viruses, all replicative events take place in the cytoplasm; in fact, many of these RNA viruses can grow in host cells in which the nucleus has been removed. Replication of most animal and plant DNA viruses, as well as the RNA influenza virus, takes place in the nucleus. In these viruses, transcription takes place in the nucleus, the mRNA migrates to the cytoplasm, where it is translated, and these viral proteins migrate back to the nucleus, where they assemble with newly replicated progeny genomes. Migration of newly translated viral proteins from the cytoplasm to the nucleus is generally a function of specific amino acid sequences called “signals,” which translocate the protein through pores in the nucleus membrane.