15 Interesting and Unknown facts about Viruses

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February 20, 2020

1. Do you know that the smallest virus is Tobacco necrosis virus, which is about 17 nm in size? In
contrast, the largest virus is the Potato fever virus which is approximately 400 nm.

2. Fossils of Cyanobacteria are kept in 3.2 billion-year-old rock in the Palaeobotany Institute of
Lucknow.

3. Bacteriophage was independently discovered by Frederick W. Twort in Great Britain (1915) and
Felix d Herelle in France (1917). Those viruses that enter the bacteria and multiply or group of
viruses that infect bacteria are called bacteriophages or bacteriophage.

4. The protein coat of the virus is called a capsid.

5. Bawden and Darlington reported that viruses are made up of nucleoprotein.

What are the diseases caused due to lack of water?

6. Viroids are small pathogens of the virus. They do not contain protein core similar to viruses. Only
the compositions of Viroids that are made up of RNA are called metaviruses.

7. Cyanobacteria are considered to be the first photosynthetic organisms.

8. Single-stranded RNA is found in the virus of rabies or hydrophobia.

9. Double-stranded DNA is found in the small Pox virus.

10. Do you know that the infectious part of the virus is nucleic acid?

11. Stanley is the first to separate the virus as a crystal.

12. Antibiotics do not affect viruses because viruses do not have metabolic processes of their own
and they always live in the host cells, so the toxic effects of antibiotics occur only to the host cell.

13. Do you know that the common cold is caused by Rhinovirus?

14. The full name of AIDS virus is Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. This disease is caused
by a virus. Viruses that spread AIDS are known by following different names:
- Human T lymphotropic Virus III (HLV-III)
- Lymphadenopathy associated virus (LAV)
- AIDS-related retrovirus (ARV)

15. Numerous bacteriophages are present in the water of river Ganga. They destroy the
pathogenic bacteria present in the polluted water of the river. Therefore, they keep the water of the
river Ganga pure by working as a scavenger. And these viruses that infect and kill bacteria could
provide a useful alternative to antibiotics in the form of phage therapy.
Although, viruses are the causative agent of several diseases. But on the other hand, they are also
used as bacteriophage to destroy harmful bacteria from the water. Therefore, Phage therapy is the
use of bacteriophages to treat pathological (disease-causing) infections caused by bacteria.

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