Viruses – Virus (Latin) refers to poison and other noxious substances

Viruses are defined in terms of their infectivity, filterability and

their requirements for living host

– Small infectious agent

– Can only replicate inside a cell
– Cannot be directly seen by a light microscope – can be seen by
electron microscopes
– Infect all types of organisms
– Usually 100x smaller than an average bacterium
– Are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth
– Consists of 2 or 3 parts
○ All viruses have genes made up of either RNA or DNA
○ All have a protein coat that protects these genes
○ Some have a lipid envelope of fat that surrounds them when
they are outside a cell
○ They vary from simple helical to more complex structures.
– Vectors – the disease-bearing organisms
○ Spreading
 Plant viruses often transmitted from plant to plant by
insects that feed on sap, such as aphids
 Animal viruses can be carried by blood-sucking insects
 Influenza viruses are spread by coughing and sneezing
– Viroids
○ not classified as viruses because they lack a protein coat
○ However, they have some common characteristics to several
viruses
 Often called subviral agents
○ Important pathogens of plants
 Don’t code for proteins but interact with the host cell
and use the host machinery for their replication
– Prions
○ infectious protein molecules that don’t contain DNA or RNA
○ pathogen for infection in sheep called “scrapie” and cattle
“bovine spongiform encephalopathy” (“mad cow” disease)
○ able to replicate because some proteins can exist in two
different shapes and the prion changes the normal shape of a
host protein into the prion shape
 Starts a chain reaction where each prion protein
converts many host proteins into more prions etc.
 – Viral infections in animals provoke an immune response that usually
eliminates the infecting virus
○ These immune responses can also be produced by vaccines,
which give immunity to specific viral infections
– Microorganisms also defences x viral infections Restriction
modification systems
– Antibiotics have no effect on viruses – but a few antiviral drugs have
been developed

Chamberland filter (Chamberland-Pasteur filter)

○ a filter with pores smaller than bacteria

○ for removing all bacteria from the solution

Tobacco mosaic virus

○ studied by Dmitry Ivanovsky (used Chamberland filter)

○ claimed the disease might be caused by a toxin produced by
bacteria
– Bacteriophages
○ Viruses that infect bacterias

Viruses are found wherever there is life and have probably existed since
living cells first evolved.

Three main hypothesis attempting to explain the origins of viruses

– Regressive hypothesis (Degeneracy hypothesis)

○ Viruses might have once been small cells that parasitized
larger cells
○ Over time, genes not required by their parasitism were lost
○ The bacteria Rickettsia and Chlamydia – can, as viruses,
reproduce only inside host cells – support this hypothesis
– Cellular origin hypothesis
○ Some viruses may have evolved from bits of DNA or RNA that
“escaped” from the genes og a larger organism
○ The escaped DNA could have come from plasmids or
transposons (molecules of DNA that replicate and move
around to different positions within the genes of the cell)
– Coevolution hypothesis
○ Viruses may have evolved from complex molecules of protein
and nucleic acid at the same time as cells first appeared on
earth and would have been dependent on cellular life for many
millions of years
 – Viruses described as “organisms at the edge of life”
○ Although they have genes, they don’t have a cellular structure
 Cellular structure is often seen as the basic unit of life
○ Do not have their own metabolism and require a host cell to
make new products
 Although bacterial species such as rickettsia and
Chlamydia are considered living organisms despite the
same limitation

Structure
○ Viruses display a wide diversity of shapes and sizes, called
Morphologies
○ Viruses generally much smaller than bacteria – most of them
have been studied between 10-300 nanometres
○ Negative staining is used to stain the background of the virus
only
○ Viruses can have a lipid “envelope” derived from the host cell
membrane.
○ The capsid is made from proteins encoded by the viral genome
and its shape serves as the basis for morphological distinction
– Proteins associated with nucleic acid are known as Nucleoproteins
– The association of viral capsid proteins with viral nucleic is called a
Nucleocapsid

Virion

○ A complete virus particle

○ Consists of nucleic acid surrounded by protein capsid
(protective coat of protein) – these are formed from identical
protein subunits called capsomers

Morphological virus types

– Helical
○ Composed of a single type of capsomer stacked around a
central axis to form a helical structure, which may have a
central cavity. This arrangement results in a rod-shaped or
filamentous (vláknitý) virions
– Icosahedral
○ Most animal viruses are icosahedral or near-sphrical with
icosahedral symmetry
– Envelope
○ Some species of virus envelope themselves in a modified form
of one of the cell membrane, either the outer membrane
 surrounding an infected host cell, or internal membranes such
as nuclear membrane or endoplasmic reticulum
– Complex
○ These viruses possess a capsid that is neither purely helical,
nor purely icosahedral
○ May possess extra structures such as protein tails or a
complex outer wall

– Is associated with proteins within a nucleoid

○ The nucleoid is surrounded by a membrance and two lateral
bodiesof unknown function
○ The virus has an outer envelope with a thick layer of protein
dragged over its surface
– Mimivirus is the largest known virus – with a capsid diameter of
400nm