 Hey everybody So today's lecture we're gonna be talking about viruses and biotechnology it's a good Ending of our unit on energy and genetic materials and how genetic material functions It's a good ending because it's really interesting talking about How the processes that we've been looking at DNA how it works how it's replicated what it actually does in yourselves how What we've learned about The genetic material actually informs Our everyday lives now You probably are not tracking. I am tracking On the fact that it's been over two months since the last time I recorded a lecture and There are millions and millions of reasons why I Took a little break but one of the biggest ones is because this is the next lecture and You know me by now y'all know me and I get really Excited about the topics that we're gonna talk about and there's something about today's topic that has left me reluctant and I just I feel like I need to say it out loud because we're gonna be talking about COVID and to me the application of the content Learn all the stuff that you've learned being able to apply what we've learned to something that has impacted us profoundly over the last three four years at the time of the recording of this Lecture but it's been hard so I'm excited like I am I promise I I am excited to Keep going and and continue our learning and to look at all these cool applications But there's also a part of me that feels Like it's hard to talk about COVID and it's hard to talk about it because I think we We don't have many options. We just are kind of like grinding back as if It's done and I don't know about y'all but I definitely have permanent impact because of experiencing this pandemic so I'm only saying it out loud because I want to acknowledge my own My own stuff that comes up when I talk about this and To sort of name or call out the fact that I feel a little less Excited and enthusiastic about this lecture, and I'm sure that you probably will pick up on that Don't go away. Don't let my my own stuff Discourage you from tackling this cool content and Don't let your own stuff prevent you from tackling this content but know that I am It's a weird time and this is a weird thing to talk about and reflect on and I think Maybe we haven't done enough reflecting on it. Maybe we're not far enough away from it yet to really Understand what we sort of went through and to have good perspective, but The cool thing is today, we're going to talk about viruses and we're going to use the SARS-CoV-2 virus as an example so Lots of viruses function very similarly and have similar structures to the virus that causes COVID-19 and We're But you know, it's relevant. It's happening in our world So we're going to use that as our example Okay, viruses are cool. They are super interesting and the combination of viral function and structure with Biotechnology that has helped us deal with viruses is it should be an interesting lecture Okay, thank you for listening to me and now we're going to talk about what is a virus