Virus
7 virus organisms and their business parallels
Bacteriophage
Bacteriophages are viruses that attack bacteria - they're the most abundant biological entities on Earth, with an estimated 10³¹ phages in the biosphe...
Endogenous Retroviruses
Approximately 8% of the human genome consists of ancient viral DNA - remnants of infections our ancestors survived millions of years ago. Some of thes...
Giant Virus
Giant viruses challenged the definition of life when discovered in 2003. At over 700nm across (larger than some bacteria) with 1,000+ genes, mimivirus...
HIV
Evolves within individual hosts, producing immune-escape variants faster than the immune system can mount effective responses. Demonstrates extreme Re...
Influenza Virus
Twice each year, scientists at the World Health Organization face an impossible prediction problem. They must select vaccine strains for the coming in...
RNA Viruses
RNA viruses (including influenza, HIV, SARS-CoV-2) have mutation rates approximately 10^-4 to 10^-5 per base per generation - 10,000x higher than bact...
Tobacco Mosaic Virus
Tobacco Mosaic Virus was the first virus ever discovered (1892) and remains a model organism for virology. It's a simple, elegant molecular machine: j...