Molecular biology and biotechnology of animal, plant, insect and bacterial viruses. Use of viruses as models for studying gene regulation and nucleic acid replication. Contribution of viruses to molecular biotechnology - strategies for the development ofantiviral agents and vaccines, cloning and expression vectors, insecticides, tools for studying oncogenesis and apoptosis, tools for diagnosis of viral infection and epidemiology of viral diseases. Molecular biology and biotechnology of prions, viroids, fungi, algae and protozoa. One section is devoted to cutting edge technology used to study micro-organisms including nucleic acid sequencing, proteomics and micro-arrays. |