For decades, biology textbooks have drawn a firm line: viruses are not alive. They lack the machinery to reproduce on their own, they carry no metabolism, and they depend entirely on host cells to ...

Bacteria and viruses are often lumped together as germs, and they share many characteristics. They’re invisible to the human eye. They’re everywhere. And both can make us sick. Bacteria and viruses ...

Understanding the differences between bacteria and viruses is crucial for recognizing how these microorganisms impact our health. While both are microscopic and can cause infections, they differ ...

In a new study, published in Cell, researchers describe a newfound mechanism for creating proteins in a giant DNA virus, comparable to a mechanism in eukaryotic cells. The finding challenges the dogma ...

Curious bits of DNA tucked inside genomes across all kingdoms of life historically have been disregarded since they don’t seem to have a role to play in the competition for survival. Or so researchers ...

Because viruses reproduce so quickly, they can adapt to new conditions in real time. For COVID-19, this means targeting ever younger people whose behavior exposes them to infection as recently found ...