See Also: Defective virus(medicine)
Herbal medicine (botanical medicine, herbology, phytomedicine)(health)
Defective(medicine)
Defective(money)
defective(dictionary)
defective(dictionary)
defective probacteriophage(medicine)
Defective Trust(law)
defective organism(medicine)
Defective viruses(medicine)

Defective virus (medicine)


defective virus
<virology> A virus genetically deficient in replication, but that may nevertheless be replicated when it co-infects a host cell in the presence of a wild type helper virus.

most acute transforming retroviruses are defective, since their acquisition of oncogenes seems to be accompanied by deletion of essential viral genetic information.