Why Might It Be More Difficult to Prepare a Vaccine

question 14

Multiple Choice

Why might it be more difficult to prepare a vaccine against noroviruses than against rotaviruses?

• A) We haven't been able to culture noroviruses in a lab setting yet. Without a starting culture, we can't create a vaccine.
• B) Noroviruses are RNA viruses, where rotaviruses are DNA viruses. RNA viruses mutate far more easily than DNA viruses, so we COULD make a vaccine, but it would be rendered useless fairly quickly as the virus mutates.
• C) We lack a proper culturing method for large-scale production of target cells for norovirus, whereas we have such a system for the target cells of rotaviruses. Without a system to get large numbers of target cells, we can't produce a vaccine.
• D) Norovirus is much more infectious than rotavirus. As such, it's much harder to work with safety. This makes production of a vaccine too dangerous and unpredictable.
• E) This question is misleading. It has been relatively simple to create vaccines against both of these virus types.

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