Viruses are only able to replicate themselves by commandeering the reproductive apparatus of cells and making them reproduce the virus's genetic structure and particles instead. How viruses do this depends mainly on the type of nucleic acid DNA or RNA they contain, which is either one or the other but never both. Viruses cannot function or reproduce outside a cell, and are totally dependent on a host cell to survive. Most viruses are species specific, and related viruses typically only infect a narrow range of plants, animals, bacteria, or fungi.
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In this Dossier
- ⭐ Core Definition: Viral life cycle
- Viral life cycle in the context of Virus latency
- Viral life cycle in the context of RNA virus
Viral life cycle in the context of Virus latency
Virus latency (or viral latency) is the ability of a pathogenic virus to lie dormant (latent) within a cell, denoted as the lysogenic part of the viral life cycle. A latent viral infection is a type of persistent viral infection which is distinguished from a chronic viral infection. Latency is the phase in certain viruses' life cycles in which, after initial infection, proliferation of virus particles ceases. However, the viral genome is not eradicated. The virus can reactivate and begin producing large amounts of viral progeny (the lytic part of the viral life cycle) without the host becoming reinfected by new outside virus, and stays within the host indefinitely.
Virus latency is not to be confused with clinical latency during the incubation period when a virus is not dormant.
View the full Wikipedia page for Virus latencyViral life cycle in the context of RNA virus
An RNA virus is a virus characterized by a ribonucleic acid (RNA) based genome. The genome can be single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) or double-stranded (dsRNA). Notable human diseases caused by RNA viruses include influenza, SARS, MERS, COVID-19, Dengue virus, hepatitis C, hepatitis E, West Nile fever, Ebola virus disease, rabies, polio, mumps, and measles.
All RNA viruses use a homologous RNA-dependent polymerase for replication and are categorized by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) into the realm Riboviria. This includes viruses belonging to Group III, Group IV, Group V, and Group VI of the Baltimore classification system. Group VI comprises the retroviruses, which have RNA genetic material but use DNA intermediates in their life cycle. Riboviria does not include viroids and satellite nucleic acids: Deltavirus, Avsunviroidae, and Pospiviroidae are taxa that were mistakenly included in 2019, but this was corrected in 2020.
View the full Wikipedia page for RNA virus