A virus is not just DNA; a virus is also packaged up, covered over with a series of proteins in a nice, elegant, well-compacted form.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Different viral species contain nucleic acids that differ not only in length and nucleotide sequence but in many unexpected ways as well.
It seems likely that most if not all the genetic information in any organism is carried by nucleic acid - usually by DNA, although certain small viruses use RNA as their genetic material.
DNA is the master blueprint for life and constitutes the genetic material in all free-living organisms and most viruses. RNA is the genetic material of certain viruses, but it is also found in all living cells, where it plays an important role in certain processes such as the making of proteins.
The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.
Human beings are a wonderful virus in some ways.
The idea of the live-virus vaccine is to produce in a continuous way some viral antigens.
Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms - recombinant DNA.
An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.
It turns out that viruses evolve from each other, like everything else. So if you look at the evolutionary tree of viruses, you can find parts of their genome that haven't changed over evolutionary time. You can recognize what may be a new virus by identifying this little piece of their genome that hasn't changed and is represented on the chip.
Virus particles contain single molecules of nucleic acid.