Abstract

All ABOUT VIRUSES

Durgesh Shinde*, Sakshi G. Gangad

ABSTRACT

The viruses living or nonliving? Early on, they were considered biological chemicals the Latin root for virus means “poison.” Viruses are capable of causing a wide variety of diseases, so researchers in the late 1800s saw a parallel with bacteria and proposed that viruses were the simplest of living forms. However, viruses can-not reproduce or carry out metabolic activities outside of a host cell. Most biologists studying viruses today would probably agree that they are not alive but exist in a shady area between life-forms and chemicals. The simple phrase used recently by two researchers describes them aptly enough: Viruses lead “a kind of borrowed life.” Compared with eukaryotic and even prokaryotic cells, viruses are much smaller and simpler in structure. Lacking the structures and metabolic machinery found in a cell, a virus is an infectious particle consisting of little more than genes packaged in a protein coat. To a large extent, molecular biology was born in the laboratories of biologists studying viruses that infect bacteria. Experiments with these viruses provided evidence that genes are made of nucleic acids, and they were critical in working out the molecular mechanisms of the fundamental processes of DNA replication, transcription, and translation.

Keywords: Discovery of Viruse, Viral replication, Human diseases caused by viruses, Coronavirus Disease and Control.