Chapter 13: Characterizing & Classifying Viruses, Viroids, and
Prions
Characteristics of Viruses
- Causes most of the diseases
- Defined as a miniscule, acellular, infectious, agent having one or more several
pieces of nucleic acid (either DNA or RNA)
- Has no cytoplasmic membrane (though some possess a membrane-like
envelope)
- An envelope is a phospholipid membrane that provides protection and
recognition sites that bind to host cells
- Lacks cytosol, and functional organelles
- Not capable of metabolic activity on their own
- In an extracellular state, virus is called a virion composed of a capsid
surrounding its nucleic acid core (also called a nucleocapsid)
Genetic Material of Viruses
- Usually smaller than the genomes of cells
- The genome of a virus may be either DNA or RNA
- some are double-stranded DNA (dsDNA), similar to the genomes of cells (ex
herpesvirus, chicken pox virus)
- other viruses either use single-stranded RNA (ssRNA), single-stranded DNA
(ssDNA), or double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) as their genomes (note: these never
function as a genome in cells)
- genomes of a virus may be either linear and composed of several molecules
of nucleic acids (as in eukaryotic cells), or circular and singular in nature
(as in prokaryotic cells)
Hosts of Viruses
- most viruses only infect a particular host’s cells
- can be so specific that they infect a particular cell of a particular host (ex HIV
specifically attacks T lymphocytes in humans, and has no effect on muscle or
bone cells)
- some viruses can also be generalists, where they infect many different cells in
many different hosts (ex the West Nile virus can infect humans, species of birds,
mammalian species, and reptiles)
- a bacteriophage ( or phage) is a virus that infects bacteria
- viruses of plants are introduced through abrasions of the cell wall or by plant
parasites
- fungal viruses only exist within cells, in which they seemingly do not have an
extracellular state, and cannot penetrate a thick fungal wall cell
- not all viruses are deleterious (harmful)
Sizes of Viruses
- viruses can only be seen through light microscopy
- the largest virus (called the Megavirus) has a diameter of 500 nm
- Dmitri Ivanowski demonstrated the acellular characteristic of viruses in an
experiment to identify the causal agent of tobacco mosaic disease in 1892
- Wendell Stanley isolated and identified the tobacco mosaic virus by 1935
using electron microscopy
Capsid Morphology
- Capsids of a virus are composed of capsomeres (or capsomers), which are
proteinaceous subunits
- Some capsomeres are composed of a single type of protein, while others have
several different proteins
recall:
- nucleocapsids are viral nucleic acids surrounded by its capsid
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Viral Shapes

- there are three basic shapes: helical, polyhedral, and complex

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