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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 ...
Paleovirology is the study of viruses that existed in the past but are now extinct. In general, viruses cannot leave behind physical fossils, [1] therefore indirect evidence is used to reconstruct the past. For example, viruses can cause evolution of their hosts, and the signatures of that evolution can be found and interpreted in the present ...
When not inside an infected cell or in the process of infecting a cell, viruses exist in the form of independent viral particles, or virions, consisting of (i) genetic material, i.e., long molecules of DNA or RNA that encode the structure of the proteins by which the virus acts; (ii) a protein coat, the capsid, which surrounds and protects the ...
Whether or not viruses should be considered as alive is controversial. [ 33 ] [ 34 ] They are most often considered as just gene coding replicators rather than forms of life. [ 35 ] They have been described as "organisms at the edge of life" [ 36 ] because they possess genes , evolve by natural selection, [ 37 ] [ 38 ] and replicate by making ...
A problem for early scientists was that they did not know how to grow viruses without using live animals. The breakthrough came in 1931, when American pathologists Ernest William Goodpasture and Alice Miles Woodruff grew influenza, and several other viruses, in fertilised chickens' eggs. [11] Some viruses could not be grown in chickens' eggs.
Hantavirus is a family of viruses that can lead to serious illness and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while Lyssavirus is a group of viruses that can cause rabies.
Viral evolution is a subfield of evolutionary biology and virology that is specifically concerned with the evolution of viruses. [1] [2] Viruses have short generation times, and many—in particular RNA viruses—have relatively high mutation rates (on the order of one point mutation or more per genome per round of replication).
The pandemic killed 40–50 million people in less than a year, [48] but the proof that it was caused by a virus was not obtained until 1933. [49] Haemophilus influenzae is an opportunistic bacterium which commonly follows influenza infections; this led the eminent German bacteriologist Richard Pfeiffer (1858–1945) to incorrectly conclude ...