Table of Contents

1. Introduction: A Short History of Virology 2. Virion Structure, Genome Organization and Taxonomy of Viruses 3. Replication and Expression Strategies of Viruses 4. Origins and Evolution of Viruses 5. Host Range, Host-Virus Interactions and Virus Transmission 6. Viruses as Pathogens: Plant Viruses 7. Viruses as Pathogens: Animal Viruses, with Emphasis on Human Viruses 8. Viruses as Pathogens: Animal Viruses Affecting Wild and Domesticated Species 9. Viruses of Prokaryotes, Protozoa, Fungi and Chromista 10. Host-Virus Interactions: Battles Between Viruses and Their Hosts 11. Beneficial Interactions with Viruses 12. Viruses as Tools of Biotechnology: Therapeutic Agents, Carriers of Therapeutic Agents and Genes, Nanomaterials, and More 13. Viruses as Targets for Biotechnology: Diagnosis and Detection, Transgenesis and Rnai- and CRISPR/Cas Engineered Resistance 14. Concluding Thoughts: It’s A Viral World

About the Author

Dr. Tennant received her PhD from Cornell University were she also completed her postdoc prior to returning to Jamaica as a Professor within the Life Sciences at The University of the West Indies. She has been a Visiting Scientist at Cornell University, US Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center, and Texas A&M and a visiting lecturer at the Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela. She has edited or co-edited 6 books and contributed chapters to an additional 7 volumes. She has received numerous awards, including Principal’s Award for the Best Publication, Principal’s Award for the Most Outstanding Researcher, HKA Career Hall of Fame Award, and Faculty’s Award for Outstanding Achievement. Dr. Gustavo Fermin is currently the Programme Coordinator of the United Nations University Biotechnology Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNU-BIOLAC). Dr. Fermin is a Biologist from Universidad de Los Andes (ULA), where he also obtained an MSc in Molecular Biology– shortly after which he began his doctoral studies at Cornell University in Ithaca and Geneva, New York. His research in New York and later in Hawaii with Dr. Dennis Gonsalves focused on creating and molecularly characterising transgenic plants resistant to one or several viruses simultaneously thanks to engineered native or synthetic transgenes. He has taught genetics, genetic engineering, molecular ecology and bioethics, among other advanced courses. An important part of his work has dealt with the education and training of young students in Latin America (Venezuela, El Salvador, Colombia, etc.), and more recently in Africa where he taught at the African-American University of Central Africa (Equatorial Guinea).

Dr. Jerome Foster is currently the Biochemistry Coordinator in the Department of Preclinical Sciences, Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine campus where he teaches molecular biology and other health-related biochemistry topics. He has expertise in molecular genetics with over two decades of experience generating and analysing viral sequence data using phylogenetic techniques with much of his work focused on pathogens among alphaviruses, coronaviruses and flaviviruses, such as dengue viruses.