By Josh Bloom
Although viruses are not alive, they have evolved into a perfect replication machine. And they do so without having to exert themselves at all. The infected host cell does it all because the virus tricks it. Reproduction without life; pretty fascinating......... What this “bag of chemicals,” which is about 100-times smaller than a bacterium, does is nothing short of amazing. It is way “smarter” than the cell that it infects. Using nothing more than a very specifically-shaped protein spike to locate and attach itself to the host cell, its own genetic material, and a few enzymes, each of which has a specific function, it turns the cell into a virus factory, letting the cell do all the work. The virus does nothing, except reproduce, courtesy of the cell, which provides the energy and the mechanism for viral replication. This is why viruses are called obligate parasites. They do not function in the absence of a host cell.
The following cartoon is a simplified representation of a viral life cycle. What the infected cell gets out of this isn’t clear, but the virus gets a lot.
Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment