A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO ... Viruses
I love viruses. There, I said it. Now, usually when people here this they back away slowly, trying not to make any sudden gestures in case they “enrage the crazy”, but as you are reading this at a safe distance, I hope you will allow me to explain why I think viruses are so cool. I’ve been fascinated with viruses since I was a teenager, when I watched films like Outbreak and The Andromeda Strain. This fascination carried on through university where I became a virologist. I then worked on a whole string of different viruses and the more I found out about them the more I was amazed by them. Not only do they make us sick and kill us, they have altered the course of civilization, added to our myths and legends and maybe even been a factor in our own evolution. They replicate in ways that are different from every other life form on earth. They are completely mindless, relentless and there’s a certain elegance in their simplicity. I’m aware that I might be starting to sound like a delusional Bond villain, but bear with me and I’ll try and explain some of those pretty big claims. It’s fitting that viruses turn up in so many zombie movies, because they are very similar to zombies. Viruses exist right on the very edge of what can be described as “life”. On their own they are completely inert, unable do anything, but once they infect a cell they quickly
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my feet in San Francisco. The tennis ball sized virus would be trying to get into a nostril 100 kilometers across. On a side note, these picornaviruses infect your nose, as they reproduce best at temperatures a couple of degrees below body temperature. This means that if you never want to catch another cold, you just have to wear some sort of nose hat. You won’t get a cold, but you might look like an idiot! Colds can be annoying, but some viruses are much more lethal. Amongst the most lethal (and a favorite of sci-fi and horror writers) is Ebola. Ebola outbreaks happen from time to time, where between 50% and 90% of those infected will die in about two weeks. The organs of Ebola victims literally liquefy and they bleed from every orifice. The reason
Image National Institute for Health (US)
hijack the cells functions and use them to make more copies of the virus. These copies then go on to infect other cells, creating more viruses, that in turn…well you get the message. Everything a virus does is to try and make more copies of itself.
Anatomy of a Virus - Influenza
At this size, if I lay down, my head could be in London and
Nose Hats. Not so ridiculous After All?
http://www.awmok.com/2012/01/31/nose-hat/
A virus at it’s simplest is just a piece of genetic material (the virus’s blueprint) contained in a protein shell called a capsid. Most of them are very small. Unbelievably, mind bendingly, small. In fact the analogy I’ve come up with sounds made up! Take the virus that causes the common cold, for instance. They belong to a family called picornavidae and are some of the smallest viruses known, about 2x10-9 meters in diameter. That’s pretty small. In fact if I magnified a picornavirus so that it was the size of a tennis ball, in order to stay at the correct scale I would have to about 9000 kilometers tall.
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