I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Disease Zone. It has scientists studying the causes and processes of illness . Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
There’s a lot of differences between viruses and bacteria, but probably the most important is that viruses need a living host to survive, while bacteria can live and reproduce on their own. Viruses can’t reproduce without invading a body’s cells and hijacking the cell’s machinery to generate more viruses. Bacteria, on the other hand, have everything that they need to reproduce on their own, and they can grow and thrive on non-living surfaces where viruses’s can’t. Some people will also say that bacteria are alive while viruses aren’t, though this is not settled, and more importantly, we can study the viruses of evolution just like we can study that of bacteria.
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Scientists define ‘cell’ as the basic(smallest) unit of life form. There are two kinds of cells-prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. The common components of all cell are cell membrane, genetic information(DNA mostly), ribosome, and cytoplasm. Bacteria belongs in prokaryotic cell and has all the necessary components. Virus has genetic information and capsid(kind of cell membrane) only. Virus can’t make any necessary proteins without ribosmes, thus it can’t survive or reproduce by itself.
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Difference in what they look like
Virus: a virus is NOT A CELL. It has no internal cellular structure, no cell wall or cell membrane. A virus only has a protein coat with some DNA or RNA inside.
Bacteria: bacteria ARE SINGLE CELLED organisms. Bacteria do not have a cell nucleus and no other organelles inside the cell. But they have DNA, a cell wall and cytoplasm.
Difference in how they multiply
Virus: Because a virus is technically not a cell and it does not have all the machinery it needs to multiply, it cannot reproduce like cells do. It needs a host cell (the cells in your body) to multiply. The infected cell will make copies of the virus and these virus copies can then infect other cells.
Bacteria: Because bacteria are single celled organisms and contain all the machinery you need to multiply, they can reproduce themselves by splitting into 2. This way, they make an exact copy of themselves.
Differences in what they do
Virus: a virus is a parasite. It needs your body to survive and multiply but will not give you anything good in return. All a virus wants, is to survive and multiply. They’re very selfish.
Bacteria: bacteria can be bad for the body and cause disease, but some bacteria are good (symbyosis, from the Greek words “living together”). Without the bacteria in your gut, you would not be able to live. So when you eat, you also feed the bacteria in your gut. In turn, they break down your food and make vitamins your body needs. But…..pathogenic bacteria are the bacteria that cause infectious diseases. Examples are tuberculosis and Salmonella.
Differences in how to get rid of them:
Virus: antibiotics WILL NOT KILL A VIRUS. Because a virus lives inside a host cell, any treatment will also damage the host cell. Your immune system is best at fighting and killing a virus! A vaccination will prevent you getting sick from a virus. A vaccine is nothing more than a non-dangerous version of the virus, which will activate your immune system. Once your immune cells have ‘seen’ this virus particle (the vaccine), they’re ready to attack it when it enters your system (the real virus infection).
Bacteria: to get rid of an infectious disease caused by bacteria, you must take antibiotics. However, the bacteria in your gut are important, you want to keep them happy and healthy!
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