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The virus may induce the cell to forcefully undergo cell division, which may lead to transformation of the cell and, ultimately, cancer. An example of a family within this classification is the Adenoviridae. There is only one well-studied example in which a class 1 family of viruses does not replicate within the nucleus.
How viruses do this depends mainly on the type of nucleic acid DNA or RNA they contain, which is either one or the other but never both. Viruses cannot function or reproduce outside a cell, and are totally dependent on a host cell to survive. Most viruses are species specific, and related viruses typically only infect a narrow range of plants ...
Each type of protein is a specialist that usually only performs one function, so if a cell needs to do something new, it must make a new protein. Viruses force the cell to make new proteins that the cell does not need, but are needed for the virus to reproduce. Protein synthesis consists of two major steps: transcription and translation. [34]
To infect a host cell, the virus must first inject its own nucleic acid into the cell through the plasma membrane and (if present) the cell wall. The virus does so by either attaching to a receptor on the cell's surface or by simple mechanical force. The binding is due to electrostatic interactions and is influenced by pH and the presence of ions.
The most important aspect of a virus is not whether it’s technically new or simply a variant. It’s the danger that virus poses. Body work: When does a virus grow so much that it gets a new name?
Viruses may have once been small cells that parasitised larger cells. Over time, genes not required by their parasitism were lost. The bacteria rickettsia and chlamydia are living cells that, like viruses, can reproduce only inside host cells. They lend support to this hypothesis, as their dependence on parasitism is likely to have caused the ...
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 ...
Depending on the virus, a variety of genetic changes can occur in the host cell. In the case of a lytic cycle virus, the cell will only survive long enough to the replication machinery to be used to create additional viral units. In other cases, the viral DNA will persist within the host cell and replicate as the cell replicates.