Medical Definition of Defective virus
1.
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.
This entry appears with permission from the Dictionary of Cell and Molecular Biology
(11 Mar 2008)
Lexicographical Neighbors of Defective Virus
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