What do we know about viruses? Interesting facts about computer virus

Viruses are not living beings. They don't have cells, they can't convert food into energy, and without a host, they're just little clumps of chemicals.

Viruses, on the contrary, are not dead - they have genes, they reproduce, and natural selection processes act for them.

Scientists were confused about detecting viruses until 1892, when Russian microbiologist Dmitry Ivanovsky proved that tobacco plants were infected by creatures much smaller than bacteria. These creatures turned out to be a virus, specifically a tobacco mosaic virus.

The American biochemist Wendel Stanley isolated the above tobacco virus in its pure form as needle-like protein crystals, for which he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1946.

Some viruses introduce their DNA into bacteria through hollow hairs, which are present in many bacteria.

The word "virus" (virus) comes from the Latin word meaning "poison" or "dirty liquid", which is quite logical for the phenomenon that causes fever and colds.

In 1992, scientists traced the source of a pneumonia that broke out in England - it turned out to be a virus hiding inside an amoeba that lives in cooling towers (cooling towers). It was so large that at first scientists mistook it for a bacterium.

The so-called mimivirus is so named because it mimics the behavior and structure of bacteria. Some experts believe that it is an intermediate link between bacteria and viruses, others are sure that it is a separate form of life. This virus is characterized by the most voluminous and complex set of DNA among all viruses.

Mimivirus has more than 900 genes in its body that code for proteins not used in other viruses. Its genome is twice the size of other known viruses and even bacteria.

There are even larger viruses called mamavirus. They are larger than some bacteria, and these viruses also have satellite viruses called Sputnik.

Amoeba for viruses are a kind of sandbox and soup kitchen - they absorb large objects within their reach and are a source of nutrients for bacteria, which inside the amoeba exchange genes with other bacteria and viruses.

Viruses can infect animals, plants, fungi, single-celled organisms and bacteria. Mamaviruses, together with the satellite, also infect other viruses.

All of us, perhaps, are the result of the work of viruses, since a significant part of our genome contains “fragments” and whole parts of viruses that were introduced into our ancestors millions of years ago and were “domesticated”.

Many of the formations in our cells are at first glance useless, which is explained, among other things, by the fact that these are viruses that have successfully taken root inside us at different stages of evolution.

Most of the ancient viruses introduced into our genome do not exist in nature today. In 2005, French scientists began work on the "resurrection" of one of these viruses.

One of the viruses resurrected in this way, codenamed Phoenix, turned out to be unviable. Apparently, not everything is so simple.

Some viral fragments in our genome seem to be responsible for the functioning of the autoimmune system and the development of cancer.

We owe our very life to viruses - some of the proteins encoded by the viral DNA in the mother's body "correct" the body's immune system so that it does not attack the embryo during development.

We are all distant relatives on Earth. Scientists have reason to believe that a billion years ago, one of the viruses invaded a bacterial cell and this resulted in a cell nucleus, which subsequently led to the formation of a variety of flora and fauna, including us.

Viruses are not living beings. They don't have cells, they don't know how to convert food into energy, and without a "host" they are just small clumps of chemicals.

Viruses, on the contrary, are not dead - they have genes, they reproduce, and natural selection processes act for them.

Scientists were confused about detecting viruses until 1892, when Russian microbiologist Dmitry Ivanovsky proved that tobacco plants were infected by creatures much smaller than bacteria. These creatures turned out to be a virus, specifically, a tobacco mosaic virus.

The American biochemist Wendel Stanley isolated the above tobacco virus in its pure form as needle-like protein crystals, for which he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1946.

Some viruses introduce their DNA into bacteria through hollow hairs, which are present in many bacteria.

The word "virus" (virus) comes from the Latin word meaning "poison" or "dirty liquid", which is quite logical for the phenomenon that causes fever and colds.

In 1992, scientists traced the source of a pneumonia that broke out in England - it turned out to be a virus hiding inside an amoeba that lives in cooling towers (cooling towers). It was so large that at first scientists mistook it for a bacterium.

The so-called mimivirus is so named because it mimics the behavior and structure of bacteria. Some experts believe that it is an intermediate link between bacteria and viruses, others are sure that it is a separate form of life. This virus is characterized by the most voluminous and complex set of DNA among all viruses.

Mimivirus has more than 900 genes in its body that code for proteins not used in other viruses. Its genome is twice the size of other known viruses and even bacteria.

There are even larger viruses called mamavirus. They are larger than some bacteria, and these viruses also have satellite viruses called Sputnik.

Amoeba for viruses are a kind of sandbox and soup kitchen - they absorb large objects within their reach and are a source of nutrients for bacteria, which inside the amoeba exchange genes with other bacteria and viruses.

Viruses can infect animals, plants, fungi, single-celled organisms and bacteria. Mamaviruses, together with the satellite, also infect other viruses.

All of us, perhaps, are the result of the work of viruses, since a significant part of our genome contains “fragments” and whole parts of viruses that were introduced into our ancestors millions of years ago and were “domesticated”.

Many of the formations in our cells are at first glance useless, which is explained, among other things, by the fact that these are viruses that have successfully taken root inside us at different stages of evolution.

Most of the ancient viruses introduced into our genome do not exist in nature today. In 2005, French scientists began work on the "resurrection" of one of these viruses.

One of the viruses resurrected in this way, codenamed Phoenix, turned out to be unviable. Apparently, not everything is so simple.

Some viral fragments in our genome seem to be responsible for the functioning of the autoimmune system and the development of cancer.

We owe our very life to viruses - some of the proteins encoded by the viral DNA in the mother's body "correct" the body's immune system so that it does not attack the embryo during development.

We are all distant relatives on Earth. Scientists have reason to believe that a billion years ago, one of the viruses invaded a bacterial cell and this resulted in a cell nucleus, which subsequently led to the formation of a variety of flora and fauna, including us.

viral electricity

Did you know that batteries are made not only using the achievements of physics and chemistry. Instead of well-known graphite, lithium oxide with cobalt or manganese, or even a promising silicon nanoconductor, battery parts in the future can be made using biomolecular technologies.

In 2009, a group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology got into the Guinness Book of Records by developing the world's first battery, where they used genetically modified viruses to create positive and negative plates. This technology allows you to create much more accurate (because viruses perfectly copy themselves), "green" and efficient (according to experts, such batteries will be 10 times more capacious, and can be recharged more than 100 times more, before run out) technology.

320 thousand unknown viruses attack humanity

An international team of scientists has announced a frightening number of viruses that could be potentially dangerous to humans.

More than 320,000 of these viruses live in the wild among mammals. Zoonotic viruses are not known to science, which will greatly complicate the treatment process.

More than 70% of already known viruses such as HIV (AIDS), West Nile, Ebola, SARS and influenza are transmitted from animals to humans.

“Over the past decades, we have faced the threat of pandemics without knowing how many more viruses are hidden in the wild,” says Peter Daszak, head of research, president of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance.

For modern virology, the discovery of new types of viruses is a big breakthrough. Previously, it was believed that there are many more unknown viruses, up to several million. Now it is clear that there are only a few hundred thousand of them. This means that each virus will be easy and quick to study.

Scientists have already discovered and studied one of these viruses. It was found in the jungles of Bangladesh, where flying foxes (bats from the fruit bat family) live, which are natural carriers of the Nipah virus, the causative agent of encephalitis and respiratory diseases, the TopNews portal writes.

Of the 1897 samples of biological material from foxes, scientists identified 55 viruses, only five of which were previously known. Ten of the 50 new viruses were of the Nipah family. Then, using a statistical method, the scientists concluded that there were three more unrecorded rare viruses - thus, the figure rose to 58. After that, the scientists distributed the number of unknown viruses to 5486 species of mammals and received an approximate number of previously unknown viruses. It amounted to 320 thousand. The figure is not final and, of course, can grow.

Approximately $6.3 billion will be needed to research and discover new viruses.

Copyright MBOU "Gymnasium 75", Kazan 2014

“It seems to me that computer viruses should be considered as a form of life. This says a lot about human nature: the only form of life we ​​have created so far is nothing but destruction. We create life in our own image and likeness. Stephen Hawking

Study

Research objectives:

To identify the level of knowledge of teachers and students of the gymnasium about biological and computer viruses, about methods for preventing and combating computer and biological viruses.

The most terrible epidemics

Not a very large number of words in any language can cause as much horror, suffering and death as the word "plague". Indeed, infectious diseases have caused enormous damage to people for centuries. They destroyed entire nations, took as many lives as sometimes even wars did not take away, and also played a decisive role in the course of history.

For your information

One day, Louis Pasteur, who was conducting experiments on infecting birds with chicken cholera, decided to go on vacation and left his assistant in the laboratory. He forgot to perform another vaccination to chickens and went on vacation himself. Returning, the assistant infected the hens, which at first weakened, but then unexpectedly recovered. Thanks to this oversight, Pasteur realized that weakened bacteria are the key to getting rid of the disease, as they give immunity from it, and became the founder of modern vaccination. Subsequently, he also created inoculations against anthrax and rabies.

In 1859, an Australian farmer brought rabbits from England to create a small population and hunt them. The absence of natural enemies and ideal conditions for life and reproduction all year round have led to an uncontrolled growth of the rabbit population, which has led to the disappearance of many species of native plants. They tried to fight the rabbits by shooting, exploding holes, poisons, building mesh barriers, but all to no avail. Finally, in the middle of the 20th century, the myxomatosis virus spread among them, which reduced the population from 600 million to 100 million. However, the surviving individuals acquired genetic resistance to the virus and began to actively reproduce again.

In 1962, an epidemic of laughter broke out in Tanzania, which eventually affected about 1,000 people. It began at a girls' school in the village of Kashasha - at first three students laughed, and soon most of the girls were infected with laughter. Attacks of laughter in each lasted from several hours to several days in a row. The school was soon temporarily closed, but the epidemic spread to other children and teenagers in 14 schools in nearby villages. The phenomenon finally disappeared 18 months after the first recorded cases.

25.03.2016

Viruses are inanimate substances in the form of chemical elements. They consist of a nucleus containing DNA or RNA, a capsid, and a lipoprotein layer. Most of the diseases in our time are of viral origin. Moreover, every year viruses change and mutate more and more. Therefore, knowing interesting facts about viruses is very very useful.

1. Viruses are capable of reproducing despite the fact that they are dead biological substances.
2. Since viruses do not have cells, they cannot generate energy from the food they eat.
3. Viruses reproduce due to their genetic makeup.
4. Viruses are able to actively interact with bacteria. They introduce their DNA into bacteria due to their microscopic size.
5. In addition to bacteria, viruses can infect unicellular organisms, fungi, plants, and animals.
6. Unlike all living organisms, viruses are not capable of synthesizing protein.
7. Due to the fact that the virus is not a living organism, scientists have learned how to synthesize them in laboratories.
8. There is a theory that the human genome contains viral parts that were introduced into it in ancient times through our ancestors.
9. Some viruses can cause cancer.
10. Viruses, in addition to living organisms, are capable of infecting other viral particles.
11. Mimiviruses are an element of the type of an average variant between a virus and a bacterium, which is able to repeat the DNA and behavior of the bacterium itself.
12. Mamaviruses are extremely large viruses.
13. Viruses, unlike bacteria, cannot reproduce on artificially created nutrient media. Their reproduction is possible only in the condition of a living organism. Therefore, viral cultures are grown in embryos or inside experimental animals.
14. Virus reproduction is most often associated with a cell
15. The ways of transmission and infection with viruses are diverse: airborne, contact, sexual, alimentary, through biological fluids.
16. There are viruses that live for a long time in the cells of the "host" and do not cause disease.
17. It has been proven that the existence of one virus in the cells of the body prevents the harmful effects of another virus. In such cases, the reproduction of one of the viral substances is suppressed by the production of a special protein. This phenomenon is called interference. Subsequently, on its basis, an antiviral drug, interferon, was developed.
18. As a diagnosis of viral diseases, specific serological reactions are priority.

Viruses are a particular threat to living organisms. Considering that more and more new viruses are being synthesized in the world and their DNA is capable of mutations, the development of antiviral drugs remains very relevant.

1. Viruses are not living beings. They don't have cells, they can't convert food into energy, and without a host, they're just little clumps of chemicals.
2. Viruses, on the contrary, are not dead - they have genes, they reproduce, and natural selection processes act for them.
3. Scientists were confused about detecting viruses until 1892, when Russian microbiologist Dmitry Ivanovsky proved that tobacco plants were infected by creatures much smaller than bacteria. These creatures turned out to be a virus, specifically a tobacco mosaic virus.
4. The American biochemist Wendel Stanley isolated the above tobacco virus in its pure form as needle-like protein crystals, for which he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1946.
5. Some viruses introduce their DNA into bacteria through hollow hairs, which are present in many bacteria.
6. The word "virus" (virus) comes from the Latin word meaning "poison" or "dirty liquid", which is quite logical for the phenomenon that causes fever and colds.
7. In 1992, scientists traced the source of a pneumonia that broke out in England - it turned out to be a virus hiding inside an amoeba that lives in cooling towers (cooling towers). It was so large that at first scientists mistook it for a bacterium.
8. The so-called mimivirus is so named because it mimics the behavior and structure of bacteria. Some experts believe that it is an intermediate link between bacteria and viruses, others are sure that it is a separate form of life. This virus is characterized by the most voluminous and complex set of DNA among all viruses.
9. Mimivirus has more than 900 genes in its body that code for proteins not used in other viruses. Its genome is twice the size of other known viruses and even bacteria.
10. There are even larger viruses called mamavirus. They are larger than some bacteria, and these viruses also have satellite viruses called Sputnik.
11. Amoeba for viruses are a kind of sandbox and soup kitchen - they absorb large objects within their reach and are a source of nutrients for bacteria, which inside the amoeba exchange genes with other bacteria and viruses.
12. Viruses can infect animals, plants, fungi, single-celled organisms and bacteria. Mamaviruses, together with the satellite, also infect other viruses.
13. All of us, perhaps, are the result of the work of viruses, since a significant part of our genome contains “fragments” and whole parts of viruses that were introduced into our ancestors millions of years ago and were “domesticated”.
14. Many of the formations in our cells are at first glance useless, which is explained, among other things, by the fact that these are viruses that have successfully taken root inside us at different stages of evolution.
15. Most of the ancient viruses introduced into our genome do not exist in nature today. In 2005, French scientists began work on the "resurrection" of one of these viruses.
16. One of the viruses resurrected in this way, codenamed Phoenix, turned out to be unviable. Apparently, not everything is so simple.
17. Some viral fragments in our genome seem to be responsible for the functioning of the autoimmune system and the development of cancer.
18. We owe our very life to viruses - some of the proteins encoded by the viral DNA in the mother's body "correct" the body's immune system so that it does not attack the embryo during development.
19. We are all distant relatives on Earth. Scientists have reason to believe that a billion years ago, one of the viruses invaded a bacterial cell and this resulted in a cell nucleus, which subsequently led to the formation of a variety of flora and fauna, including us.

Every year, humanity is faced with various kinds of factors that in one way or another affect life. In the global sense, these are man-made disasters, atmospheric phenomena and natural disasters ... But let's not forget about the danger that lies in wait for us at every step, accompanying us every minute. In this article, we will talk about an invisible and little-studied threat - viruses.

Non-cellular life forms that bring death (virus - "poison")

Viruses originated long before the advent of mankind. But people learned about them only in 1892 thanks to the research of a Russian scientist Ivanovsky Dmitry.

A very interesting fact about how a viral disease occurs - more precisely, how the virus enters our bodies. First, it attaches to the cell wall of some living organism, then inserts a hollow rod and introduces DNA or RNA. Loses its capsid (shell). Then it replicates the genome, multiplies, new viral particles are assembled from the genome, and finally the viruses leave the cell.

At the beginning of the article, it is advisable to touch on interesting facts about the structure of viruses:

1. genetic material - DNA or RNA. For example, a mimivirus (a huge virus that is visible under a light microscope and is closer in size to bacteria) has both types of molecules in it;
2. Protein coat (capsid) protecting the genetic material.
3. This completes the structure of simple viruses. But complex viruses have, in addition to the above additional lipid (fatty) membranes.

In the cells of a 3-day-old embryo, there were many viral proteins, and so many that they were already beginning to combine into a kind of ready-made viral particles. Moreover, they influenced the activity of other genes of the embryo: for example, the viral Rec protein increased the level of the IFITM1 protein, whose task is to sit on the surface of the cell and prevent a viral infection from entering it. It turned out that the "home" virus covered the germ cells from their relatives.

The most dangerous group of viruses that can kill a person are filoviruses.

They can lead to dehydration and bleeding, resulting in death. The most common member of this group is Ebola, as well as the less "popular" in our time, but the deadly Marburg. Now both of these hemorrhagic fevers are flaring up, mainly in African countries (Uganda, Zaire, Sudan, etc.). Mortality is very high: having become infected, a person will die with a probability of 50 to 90%.

Most dangerous viruses enter the human body through airborne droplets. Exceptions: hepatitis, HIV, various types of herpes.

More than 200 types of viruses cause colds.

Some viruses can cause cancer in humans.

Bracanid wasp instead of poison, injects its own "hand viruses" into the victim's body , which for millions of years have helped these wasps live in the bodies of other insects without being attacked by the immune system of the hosts. By the way, these insects are not afraid of nuclear war - they can withstand exposure to 1800 Gray (a person needs 200 times less to die). In the post-apocalyptic future, these insects will multiply freely and mutate rapidly.

Inheritance of viruses occurs due to their entry into the germ cells of men and women.

Researchers from the Gustav Rossi Institute, led by Thierry Heidman, were brought back to life in 2006 Ancient phoenix virus, which infected the eggs and sperm of human ancestors many millions of years ago and managed to distribute numerous copies of its genetic material in the genome of our ancestors. This virus came to life in the realities of the laboratory of the 21st century, and scientists noted that it not only penetrates the cell, but also integrates into DNA.

Interesting facts about viruses: a favorable environment for them are unicellular protozoa. Amoeba is a kind of "kindergarten" for viruses. Here they can exchange information and transfer genes to each other.

HIV belongs to the group of RNA viruses. They are also called RETROVIRUS. And thanks to another type of retroviruses, the Araucan chicken breed boasts its unusual blue egg color. Despite this "suspicious feature", they can be eaten.

We hope that the above interesting facts about viruses were informative for you, our dear readers.