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Viruses are among the biggest threats to humanity, with the current pandemic showing how these pathogens can shut down countries, halt entire industries and cause untold human suffering as they ...
Unlike viruses, they are living organisms that can live and reproduce on their own. The vast majority of bacteria don’t hurt us, and many – like the ones that live in our gut and help digest ...
Whether or not viruses should be considered as alive is controversial. [ 35 ] [ 36 ] They are most often considered as just gene coding replicators rather than forms of life. [ 37 ] They have been described as "organisms at the edge of life" [ 38 ] because they possess genes , evolve by natural selection, [ 39 ] [ 40 ] and replicate by making ...
The virus problem is itself another definition issue (are viruses alive and are viruses life are different questions, and possibly get different answers), as is the "when is a fetus alive" question. The answer is there is no absolute meaningful line that can be drawn which is beyond dispute .
Destroying the virus now is merely a symbolic act that would slow our progress and could even stop it completely, leaving the world vulnerable.... Destruction of the last securely stored viruses is an irrevocable action that should occur only when the global community has eliminated the threat of smallpox once and for all.
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. [1] Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. [2] [3] Viruses are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most numerous type of biological entity.
Some viruses cause disease in humans, and others are responsible for economically important diseases of livestock and crops. Virus particles (known as virions) consist of genetic material, which can be either DNA or RNA, wrapped in a protein coat called the capsid; some viruses also have an outer lipid envelope.
Gamma phage, an example of virus particles (visualised by electron microscopy) Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses.It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, their interaction with host organism physiology and immunity, the diseases they ...