What is a Virus?

Current public discourse is naturally focused on the current novel coronavirus COVID-19 and the impact on societal health, wellbeing and economics.

The World Health Organization called the current novel coronavirus COVID-19. Scientifically, this is not the formal name for the virus. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses calls it the “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2”, or SARS-CoV-2, because it is related to the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003. However, to avoid confusion with SARS the WHO named it the COVID-19 virus when communicating with the public.

In the past week, we at StriveStronger have had many clients ask us where they can access scientific literature about viruses generally. The following is a good overview of viruses in general freely available from Molecular Cell Biology. 4th edition by Lodish H, Berk A, Zipursky SL, et al. New York: W. H. Freeman; 2000,  accessible via the National Centre for Biotechnology Information, an organization that advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information, available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21523/

A few take away points about viruses generally:

• A virus is a small parasite that cannot reproduce by itself. (This differs to bacteria, which are microscopic, single-celled organisms that thrive in diverse environments).
• Most viruses have either Ribonucleic acid (RNA) (a molecule essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes) or DNA (a long molecule that contains our unique genetic code.)  as their genetic material. (This is different to bacteria that carry only one set of chromosomes).
• Simple viruses contain only enough RNA or DNA to encode 4 proteins although the most complex can encode 100 – 200 proteins.
• In order for a virus to survive, the virus must be adsorbed into a host, attach to a protein receptor in the host, penetrate the cell, replicate within the cell using the cellular machinery and then be released. This cycle is known as viral replication. This differs from bacteria that reproduce by dividing into two cells, a process called binary fission).