for the spread…just refer to Orthomyxovirus.
for the lethal…just refer to Filovirus.
for the uncurable in long period…just refer to Retroviridae, genus Lentivirinae

Actually I like this kind of designing question…since I really wanna create one…:twisted:

Serve uncooked food, the oldest method in history.

Hmm..first, you’ve to find a specific receptor on that person..there you’ll have to know about his/her medical records. After that, you can design a virus with that specific antireceptor.
What I can imagine is designing a virus which can cause great anaphylactic syndromes (so, his/her immune system is the one who kill him/her…the virus is only as an initiator)… 😈

hmmm.. interesting, but don’t you think its difficult to find receptors unique to just a single person? What I’m thinking is that what makes each of us unique? Bottom line is only our DNA are different and not by much. So design you can probably design a human virus that integrates into the chromosome somehow able to "sense" that unique DNA sequence of target human and then the structural genes in your virus will be trigerred given the appropriate DNA sequences. Now there are ways to kill a person with a designed virus, targetting a specific person is more difficult though; with a lot of work, time and funding, it can probably be done; so its probably easier to kill him with a toxin in the food or something 😀

Ok, this is my idea which is probably wrong cuz i’m just a high school student.Anyway, i think in order for it to kill a specific person it would have to work on their DNA. If you could design a virus to work like an antigen then it would enter the body and recognize it’s antigens as "foreign" and shuffle the DNA to produce antibodies against them. When this happens the immune system should break down considerably leaving the virus to move through the cell surface membranes of all the cells and continue it’s work.
In order for this to work, the virus must be swift so that it can get to the nucleus faster than the self antigens. It must therefore have external structures such as flagella or cilia to help it move along.
It must also contain a mutagen such as formaldehyde which will cause the shuffling of DNA bases so as to produce the antibodies nessecary.
The size of the virus must be very small like that of a water molecule and it’s surface must be polar so that it will pass freely and quickly from cell to cell through the surface membranes

As I know even the smallest virus is much bigger than a water molecule.

What about polar surfase – I think, it is possible if to use antistatic electrecity, but how to do this is probably easy question for victor

This sounds like a virus from the game Metal Gear Solid, they called it the FoxDie

Identification of target cells could work with MHC recognition.

If it was possible to create a virus to kill one specific person and not just a gender or a race, how long would it last like this? Viruses mutate and what if this one did and it mutated to kill not just a specific person.

Also what class is this essay for. Your teacher/lecturer sounds cool giving you an assignment like this.

Unless certain governments are hiding info from us this isn’t possible. The greatest virologists in the world can’t do it and your teacher thinks you can lol. Does he just want an essay speculating how you would go about it?

Pardon me?? 😆

I think that the teacher just want his/her students can create some imaginable viruses by using virology discipline…:lol:
Hey, continuing my previous post…you can create a virus which attack Basophils or mast cells. By using certain receptors in those mast cells which is usually get affected by allergen, you can create the resemblance virus’ antireceptor. Oh, you also have to create an antireceeptor in order to bind RBC glycoprotein (glycoprotein which determines someone blood type, so the virus is "riding" the RBC to the mast cells place 😆 )

So, the mechanism is like this, when a virus is released (via airborne), it will get in into the target’s body (usually via respiratory) and riding some RBCs there. Then, when it gets to the mast cell, this virus will change its host into mast cell and starting various mechanisms to replicate and also activate its host (mast cell) to produce massive histamine, leucotrine, prostaglandine, etc to promote a great anaphylaxis syndrome like a sudden vasodilatation which affect in sudden drop in blood pressure so, there’ll be a sudden heart attack….
the result, as you all can predict..a sudden heart attack followed by other anaphylaxis syndrome in certain minutes can be lethal for someone..

Ooh…I’ve create an image of my virus… 😈 😆

Pardon me?? 😆

I think that the teacher just want his/her students can create some imaginable viruses by using virology discipline…:lol:
Hey, continuing my previous post…you can create a virus which attack Basophils or mast cells. By using certain receptors in those mast cells which is usually get affected by allergen, you can create the resemblance virus’ antireceptor. Oh, you also have to create an antireceeptor in order to bind RBC glycoprotein (glycoprotein which determines someone blood type, so the virus is "riding" the RBC to the mast cells place 😆 )

So, the mechanism is like this, when a virus is released (via airborne), it will get in into the target’s body (usually via respiratory) and riding some RBCs there. Then, when it gets to the mast cell, this virus will change its host into mast cell and starting various mechanisms to replicate and also activate its host (mast cell) to produce massive histamine, leucotrine, prostaglandine, etc to promote a great anaphylaxis syndrome like a sudden vasodilatation which affect in sudden drop in blood pressure so, there’ll be a sudden heart attack….
the result, as you all can predict..a sudden heart attack followed by other anaphylaxis syndrome in certain minutes can be lethal for someone..

Ooh…I’ve create an image of my virus… 😈 😆

Victor can I ask what you do? for a living I mean.

I’m a student….an undergraduate university student…:lol:
so, I’m still jobless till now.. 😆
all I can do is asking money to my parents in Jakarta to make a living here in Yogyakarta..

Indonesia. Did u get troubled by the Tsunami. There was also another recent tsunami in that area wasn’t there.

What is your degree in?

Um, I’m fine here and I’m starting my 2nd year as an undergraduate biology student here…:lol: maybe we can continue this off-topic chat in off-topic discussion.. I’ll wait you in "wanna chat ’bout anything..bio or not.." post.

Ok, back to the topic..I wanna modify my previous post..
I think that, by using blood type as a specific antigent is not enough since if I create a virus which attack A type, it would also attack AB type…then O type will be immune to that virus.
Ok, I think I’ll design the new one…the concept is still the same, virus which is lethal for its anaphylaxis cause.
Type: Airborne virus, enveloped, +sense RNA virus.
Virion : spherical
This virus have an antireceptor which is complementary with B-cell receptor. By hijacking B-cell. it makes B-cell secrete massive amount of IgE (IgE is responsible for anaphylaxis syndrome and other allergic syndromes which is secreted in a little amount in body but has a very effective effect).
This Fc from IgE will bind the mast cells receptors and when a tiny allergen gets in into the victim, it will bind with Fab (fragment of antigent binding) from IgE and triggers the influx of Ca2+ ion towards mast cells and this means, mediator releasing…the mediator is consist of histamine, IFN-γ, leukotrine, etc.. And, when histamine is released, it will affect in increases in vascular permeability and drops the blood pressur in a sudden. So, the victim will die because of heart fail.

I’ll post another further characteristic of this virus…let me think again for more…:lol:[/b]

Ok, so what you have to do is kinda hard. Humans have 99.9% the same DNA. The part that is not the same makes up some parts of non-coding DNA refered to as SNIPS. These are differences only in one base pair that occur once in every 1000 nucleotides at average in the human genome. So, if you would want to infect that particular person, your virus should recognise his/hers unique combination of SNIPS. No idea how to do that though…

Hmm…I can suggest that I should know my victim’s medical record and for that specific site, I think that immune systems has a wide variation about this (since one of them is adapted immunity).. 😆
Ok, let’s make one..

FOXDIE is a fictional virus from the video game Metal Gear Solid. It is a retrovirus genetically modified to attack a specific person or peoples by identifying their DNA.

FOXDIE works by first infecting the macrophages in the victim’s body. It contains smart enzymes created through protein engineering that are programmed to respond to specific genetic patterns in the cells. Recognizing the target’s DNA, they then respond to the DNA by becoming active. Using the macrophages they begin creating TNF epsilon which is a type of cytokine, a peptide which causes cells to die. The TNF epsilon is carried along the bloodstream to the heart and there they attach to the TNF receptors in the heart cells. The heart cells suffer a shock and undergo an extreme apoptosis; in other words, the heart cells commit suicide. This kills the carrier with what appears to be a heart attack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXDIE

I can think that the bolded words must be hard to be created.. 😆
but, nothing impossible with this….because there’s only one word that fit with "impossible" word, which is "mission", not "it’s".

Wow, I thought you guys were supposed to be thinking up this stuff on your own 😉
anyway… the idea of the question was to get students to think about what kind of receptor is unique to a person’s cells… and yes, I was going for MHCI, which is different on every person. If you could engineer the virus to recognize and bind to that, it could only infect that particular person. Yes, it would be nearly impossible to do, so I’m not too worried about getting arrested for suggesting it… I’m not crazy, honest! 🙂