Virus Case
Essay by people • December 7, 2011 • Essay • 278 Words (2 Pages) • 1,403 Views
This essay is just an essay to gain access to the website. This essay is not really about anything of substance. I could just ramble on for two hundred and fifty words or I can actually talk about something. Which should I do? Well, I tell you what. Let us examine the topic of viruses for a second. Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites that are ultramicroscopic in size. Viruses are not cellular in nature and have a very compact structure. Independently, viruses do not fulfill the characteristics of life. Outside of a host cell viruses are only inactive macromolecules. The basic structure of viruses consists of a protein shell known as a capsid. Viruses can have either DNA or RNA as their nuciec acid but not both. Nucliec acid can be double-stranded DNA, double-stranded RNA, single-stranded DNA, or single-stranded RNA. There are molecules on the surface of viruses that impact high specificity for attachment to the host cell. Viruses multiply by takng control of the host cells' genetic material. They lack the enzymes for most metabolic processes. Viruses also lack the machinery for synthesizing proteins. Viruses are referred to as infectious paricles rather than organisms. There are three ways of quantification of virus number in animal virues. The first is direct count. Second is to dilute the virus sample and count the pplaques. The last is to determine the dose that gives fifty percent mortality rate. Plant viruses can be counted directly or diluted and count the plaques. Bacterial viruses can be counted the same as plant.
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