Compare two microorganisms: Virus and Bacteria

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Let's take a closer look. I also attached three diagrams that clearly illustrates the difference between viruses and bacteria pathogens.

RESPONSE:

a. Describe the basic chemical, molecular, and/or cellular mechanisms of infection for viruses and bacteria.

Unlike bacteria that is a living organism, a virus is an extremely tiny infectious agent that is only able to live inside a cell.

? Viruses are tiny geometric structures that can only reproduce inside a living cell. They range in size from 20 to 250 nanometers (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter). Outside of a living cell, a virus is dormant, but once inside, it takes over the resources of the host cell and begins the production of more virus particles. Viruses are more similar to mechanized bits of information, or robots, than to animal life.

? Basically, viruses are composed of just two parts - (1) The outer part is a protective shell made of protein and (2) This shell is often surrounded by another protective layer or envelope, made of protein or lipids (fats). The inner part is made of genetic material, either RNA or DNA.

? A virus does not have any other structures (called organelles) that living cells have, like a nucleus or mitochondria.
These organelles are the tiny organs that maintain a cell's metabolism (life processes).

? A virus has no metabolism at all. Because a virus lacks organelles, it cannot reproduce by itself.

? To reproduce, a virus invades a cell within the body of a human or other creature, called the host.

? Each type of virus has particular types of host creatures and host cells that it will invade successfully.

? Once within the host cell, the virus uses the cell's own organelles to produce more viruses.

? In essence, the virus forces the cell to replicate the virus' own genetic material and protective shell. Once replicated, the new viruses leave the host cell and are ready to invade others (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hanta/hps/noframes/virus.htm).

Virus Structure

? Viruses are not plants, animals, or bacteria, but they are the quintessential parasites of the living kingdoms. Although they may seem like living organisms because of their prodigious reproductive abilities, viruses are not living organisms in the strict sense of the word.

? Unlike bacteria, without a host cell, viruses cannot carry out their life-sustaining functions or reproduce. They cannot synthesize proteins, because they lack ribosomes and must use the ribosomes of their host cells to translate viral messenger RNA into viral proteins.

? Viruses cannot generate or store energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), but have to derive their energy, and all other metabolic functions, from the host cell.

? They also parasitize the cell for basic building materials, such as amino acids, nucleotides, and lipids (fats). Although viruses have been speculated as being a form of protolife, their inability to survive without living organisms makes it highly unlikely that they preceded cellular life during the Earth's early evolution. Some scientists speculate that viruses started as rogue segments of genetic code that adapted to a parasitic existence.

? All viruses contain nucleic acid, either DNA or RNA (but not both), and a protein coat, which encases the nucleic acid.

? Viruses are also enclosed by an envelope of fat and protein molecules. In its infective form, outside the cell, a virus particle is called a virion.

? Each virion contains at least one unique protein synthesized by specific genes in its nucleic acid. Viroids (meaning "viruslike") are disease-causing organisms that contain only nucleic acid and have no structural proteins.

? Other viruslike particles called prions are composed primarily of a protein tightly integrated with a small nucleic acid molecule.

? Viruses are generally classified by the organisms they infect, animals, plants, or bacteria.

? Since viruses cannot penetrate plant cell walls, virtually all plant viruses are transmitted by insects or other organisms that feed on plants.

? Certain bacterial viruses, such as the T4 bacteriophage, have evolved an elaborate process of infection. The virus has a "tail" which it attaches to the bacterium surface by means of proteinaceous "pins." The tail contracts and the tail plug penetrates the cell wall and underlying membrane, injecting the viral nucleic acids into the cell.

? Viruses are further classified into families and genera based on three structural considerations: 1) the type and size of their nucleic acid, 2) the size and shape of the capsid, and 3) whether they have a lipid envelope surrounding the nucleocapsid (the capsid enclosed nucleic acid).

? There are predominantly two kinds of shapes found amongst viruses: rods, or filaments, and spheres. The rod shape is due to the linear array of the nucleic acid and the protein subunits making up the capsid. The sphere shape is actually a 20-sided polygon (icosahedron). (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/virus.html)

Historically, the nature of viruses wasn't understood until the twentieth century, but their effects had been observed for centuries. For example, British physician Edward Jenner even discovered the principle of inoculation in the late eighteenth century, after he observed that people who contracted the mild cowpox disease were generally immune to the deadlier smallpox disease. Then, by the late nineteenth century, scientists knew that some agent was causing a disease of tobacco plants, but would not grow on an artificial medium (like bacteria) and was too small to be seen through a light microscope. Advances in live cell culture and microscopy in the twentieth century eventually allowed scientists to identify viruses. Advances in genetics dramatically improved the identification process. The virus includes:

1. Capsid - The capsid is the protein shell that encloses the nucleic acid; with its enclosed nucleic acid, it is called the nucleocapsid. This shell is composed of protein organized in subunits known as capsomers. They are closely associated with the nucleic acid and reflect its configuration, either a rod-shaped helix or a polygon-shaped sphere. The capsid has three functions: 1) it protects the nucleic acid from digestion by enzymes, 2) contains special sites on its surface that allow the virion to attach to a host cell, and 3) provides proteins that enable the virion to penetrate the host cell membrane and, in some cases, to inject the infectious nucleic acid into the cell's cytoplasm. Under the right conditions, viral RNA in a liquid suspension of protein molecules will self-assemble a capsid to become a functional and infectious virus.

2. Envelope - Many types of virus have a glycoprotein envelope surrounding the nucleocapsid. The envelope is composed of two lipid layers interspersed with protein molecules (lipoprotein bilayer) and may contain material from the membrane of a host cell as well as that of viral origin. The virus obtains the lipid molecules from the cell membrane during the viral budding process. However, the virus replaces the proteins in the cell membrane with its own proteins, creating a hybrid structure of cell-derived lipids and virus-derived proteins. Many viruses also develop spikes made of glycoprotein on their envelopes that help them to attach to specific cell surfaces.

3. Nucleic Acid - Just as in cells, the nucleic acid of each virus encodes the genetic information for the synthesis of all proteins. While the double-stranded DNA is responsible for this in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, only a few groups of viruses use DNA. Most viruses maintain all their genetic information with the single-stranded RNA. There are two types of RNA-based viruses. In most, the genomic RNA is termed a plus strand because it acts as messenger RNA for direct synthesis (translation) of viral protein. A few, however, have negative strands of RNA. In these cases, the virion has an enzyme, called RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (transcriptase), which must first catalyze the production of complementary messenger RNA from the virion genomic RNA before viral protein synthesis can occur. ...