How are viruses different from cells

In contrast, bacteria and fungi have cells, metabolism, and are able to reproduce. Viruses do not make their own food, plants do. Viruses don't use their own energy to grow, plants, once again, do. Viruses do not grow. Growth is the increase in size or the number of cells. Viruses do not have cells; therefore, they do not grow.

Yes, both viruses and cells have DNA. Log in. Study now. See answer 1. Best Answer. Study guides. Science 20 cards. Who is known as the first African American scientist. What is Luis Alvarez's cultural background. What was Benjamin Banneker's ethnic background. Which scientist used mathematical knowledge to calculate the exact measurement of the meter.

Q: How are viruses different from cells? Write your answer Related questions. How are cells and viruses different? How are viruses and cells different? What do viruses do to you? Can viruses infect cells? Compare and contrast cells and viruses?

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What is different between a cell and a virus? Where can you find the infection from a virus its not in my blood? Are viruses general or specific to the cells that they infect? Are viruses cells? List prokaryotic cells eukaryotic cells and viruses in order of increasing complexity? What characteristics do cells and viruses share?

How are viruses different from bacteria and fungi? What three ways are viruses different from cells? Do viruses grow and develop? There is a reason why these sneaky viruses went undetected from the scrutinizing eyes of the scientists. Viruses are extremely small, so small that even bacteria are large in comparison with them.

You can see the different sizes of cells here. Another example would be the Hepatitis virus. If the virus was 6 feet tall, the E. Now you can wonder why these viruses kept passing through the filters. And these viruses are sneaky, causing some of the worst human diseases. Here are some examples;. The Ebola virus caused the Ebola endemic. The H1N1 virus caused the Swine Flu pandemic. The list goes on. The virus is a genetic parasite.

As it lacks the organelles needed for protein synthesis and life, it needs a host. Living cells have a lot of complicated mechanisms that help them maintain homeostasis. Then it makes the host cell zombie. So Virus us a parasite that can make a cell into a zombie. But how does a virus gets inside the cells? It has a pass. Normal cells have a cell membrane that acts as a gate. This gate allows some proteins inside and all other useless things are rejected.

To recognize which proteins to let in, the membrane has a receptor protein. When a useful protein touches the receptors like lock and key , the shape of the protein matches the receptors and the gate opens.

Viruses replicate this shape as if making a duplicate key. This is how the enter inside healthy cells. But the process does not stop there. After the virus has bypassed the security check, it chooses how to enter the cell. Different viruses have different ways of getting in. The RNA then hijacks the nucleus of the cell and turns it into a virus factory. Poliovirus bores a hole in the cell and gets inside while Flu virus goes inside the cell completely.

And what happens after that, you are aware of it. Once a virus gets inside the cell and infects it, it is then called a virion. Is a virus a cell might be a difficult question to answer, but this new property of viruses makes it even more difficult. Viruses are known to have two different phases, the lytic phase, and the lysogenic phase. In the lytic phase, the virus reproduces actively, using the resources of the host cell.

This can also be an attribute of a cell. Like cells replicate, viruses show this similarity. So is a virus a cell? This property shows it is. In the lysogenic phase, the virus lays dormant and does not actively reproduce.

As the host cell multiplies, the virus also multiplies passively. This is not an attribute of any cell. See the problem? But some hypotheses try to give some idea about it. The Progressive Hypothesis suggests that some genetic material from some cells started moving out of the nucleus along with some enzymes. They got separated and started living life as parasites. This is called the Virus-first hypothesis. The Human Genome Project is an ambitious project that is undertaken to sequence and records the entire human genome.

Called the endogenous retrovirus, these DNA sequences are from viruses that decided to permanently take residence in our DNA and stop this process of infecting. You can read more about it here. Viruses are fast-evolving organisms as they reproduce so quickly. This creates a huge problem in treating the diseases caused by them. For normal bacteria, antibiotics work fine, but viruses need something drastic.

The 1 percent then multiplies quickly with some genetic mutation that makes the drug ineffective against them. This is why AIDS is such a dangerous disease and this is why you need flu shots every year. This is a very perplexing question but it can happen. Microorganisms can also get infected by other microorganisms. So how does that happen? And is a virus a cell if it can get infected as other cells do? Scientists discovered a new type of viruses that are really large.

These are called Mimivirus, Mamavirus, and Megavirus. In the case of Mamavirus, there is a small virus that lives inside this large virus, called Sputnik. Mamaviruses infect amoeba cells and take over them to produce more mamaviruses. But here the smaller virus interferes. Once the mamavirus has taken over, the sputnik hijacks the amoeba and takes control, infecting the larger Mamavirus. Poor little amoeba has to go through two parasites.

Maybe answering is a virus a cell is not that easy, but why should we call it a cell? Viruses are something more than living or dead, they are both. Maybe we need a new classification of life for them, a life that lives when the environment is favorable and hibernates when it is not. What do you think? Is a virus a cell? What are your thoughts? Cell Size comparison in an interactive way.

Mimiviruses and more.