Virologist
Virologist
is the study of viruses. Submicroscopic, parasitic particles of genetic material contained in a protein coat and virus-like agents. It focuses on the following aspects of viruses: their structure, classification and evolution, their ways to infect and exploit host cells for reproduction, their interaction with host organism physiology and immunity, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy. Virology is a subfield of microbiology.
A major branch of virology is virus classification. Viruses can be classified according to the host cell they infect: animal viruses, plant viruses, fungal viruses, and bacteriophages. Another classification uses the geometrical shape of their capsid or the virus's structure.
As most viruses are too small to be seen by a light microscope, sequencing is one of the main tools in virology to identify and study the virus. Traditional Sanger sequencing and next-generation sequencing (NGS) are used to sequence viruses in basic and clinical research, as well as for the diagnosis of emerging viral infections, molecular epidemiology of viral pathogens, and drug-resistance testing.
The word virus appeared in 1599 and originally meant "venom".
Viruses are bacteria. Viruses are grown.
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