Unless they can enter a warm body and get inside a cell, viruses are inert. More surprisingly, nearly all viruses are harmless to humans. FMTNews FMTLifestyle Virus Health
While their origins are uncertain, viruses have left their imprint on nearly all life on Earth, including humans.
Their tiny size, for starters. If each virus in a human body grew to the size of a pinhead, the average adult would become 150 kilometres tall. Lay them all end to end and they’d stretch 100 million light years, or 1,000 times the breadth of the Milky Way.Viruses are best thought of as “molecular packages”, according to Teri Shors, professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and author of several books on the subject.Essentially strings of genetic material contained by a few protein molecules, viruses occupy a strange middle ground between the living and the inert.
Ed Rybicki, a virologist at the University of Cape Town, said viruses were “as much a concept as a thing”.Shors said that viruses were “metabolically inactive”.But once it infects its host, “the entire cellular machinery is entirely devoted to making viral progeny”, said Suttle.While their beginnings are uncertain, viruses have left their imprint on nearly all life on Earth, including humans.
Indeed, many viruses benefit human health, infecting other organisms that would otherwise do us harm.
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