Read on Twitter
Bill Bryson’s wonderful book, The Body: A Guide for Occupants ( http://bit.ly/2vESW5z thanks @Moneylifers) has quite a few super fascinating facts on viruses. Here are a few excerpts.
Viruses are a little weird, not quite living but by no means dead. Outside living cells they are just inert things. They don’t eat or breathe or do much of anything. They have no means of locomotion. They do not propel themselves; they hitchhike.
We must go out and collect them– from door handles or handshakes,or drawn in with the air we breathe. Most of the time they are as lifeless as a mote of dust, but put them into a living cell and they will burst into animate existence and reproduce as furiously as any living thing
Ok, this one is my favourite: Something else viruses do is bide their time. A most extraordinary example of that came in 2014 when a French team found a previously unknown virus, Pithovirus sibericum, in Siberia.
Although it had been locked in permafrost for thirty thousand years, when injected into an amoeba it sprang into action with the lustiness of youth.
Here’s another excellent excerpt tweeted by @nakedeyebooks. https://twitter.com/nakedeyebooks/status/1244184935319175168
