10 Interesting Facts about Viruses

You should at least read and know one of these following facts about viruses below since it can help you to prevent its attack. Virus is a small infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of other organisms. Viruses can infect all types of life forms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea. The origins of viruses in the evolutionary history of life are unclear; some may have evolved from plasmids – pieces of DNA that can move between cells—while others may have evolved from bacteria. To get to know more about it, here are some other facts about viruses you should know further.

Facts about viruses 1: Intermediate Step

Because viruses are such simple organisms made up of just genetic code (DNA or RNA) and a protein shell, some scientist feel that they should not be classified as living. They may be an intermediate step between organic chemicals and more complex living cells like bacteria.

Facts about viruses 2: Size

Viruses are extremely small, only 20 to 250 nanometers in size so thousands of them could fit into one cell, but don’t let them in they will just wreck the place and leave a mess.

Facts about viruses 3: Useful for Body

Just because they are always parasitic doesn’t mean that they are all bad for humans sometimes they attack bacteria that is harmful to us. So it is a classic ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ situation.

Facts about viruses 4: Type of Virus

Many viruses cause disease, viruses cause colds, flu, chickenpox, measles, mumps, rubella, and even HIV, which causes AIDS, is a virus. They are nasty and unlike bacterial infection it is very hard to treat viral infections.

Facts about viruses 5: Human Influenza Virus

The first human influenza virus was isolated in 1933. In 2005, the 1918 pandemic influenza virus strain was constructed from nucleic acid sequence obtained from victims of the disease.

Facts about viruses 6: Biggest Virus

The biggest known viruses are mimiviruses, which are 400 nanometers (0.0004 millimeters) in diameter. The viral genome is 1,200,000 nucleotides in length and codes for over 900 proteins.

Facts about viruses 7: Reproduction

Viruses are not alive. They are inanimate complex organic matter. They lack any form of energy, carbon metabolism, and cannot replicate or evolve. Viruses are reproduced and evolve only within cells.

Facts about viruses 8: Colds

Colds are caused by viruses but there is no vaccine because there are literally thousands of viruses that cause colds, so it looks like chicken soup for you and some nice bed rest.

Facts about viruses 9: Immunity

Viruses are usually adapted to live in a certain type of host animal of plant but if a mutation allows it to jump species the results can be devastating because non of the new host population has any immunity to the new virus and so the initial infection can spread very quickly and be very dangerous until people start to develop immunity.

Facts about viruses 10: Virus Spreading

It is important to was hands regularly and sneeze or cough into a tissue or your hand. It is also vital to avoid people who are not following these basic rules because one person can infect thousands.

Hope you will be healthy after you read those facts above. And hope you would find those viruses facts really interesting for your reading.