What Makes a Virus immortal?

If you’ve ever seen a movie where the virus jumps from animal to animal, it may have looked like the movie was taking place in our body. That is only one way how viruses are spread from one person to another. It could also be through insect bite or from touching something that has been infected. Although there is no way to tell exactly how it got into your body, there are some clues you can use to find out.

Viruses rely mainly on the cells of living organisms for food and energy, since they can only survive or reproduce themselves if they can capture or steal energy from another living organism. Therefore they can not survive outside of a living host organism, which is the reason why they are usually considered as non-living. Every living cell contains some type of protein. The viruses can take this protein and infect other cells, causing them to grow abnormally or die. These abnormal cells will then start to reproduce rapidly, thus spreading the infection. It is very important to get rid of the virus, or at least slow its reproduction rate, before it causes any more problems.

The proteins that make up virus particles are generally very large. When the particles move around in the fluid around the human body they become tangled in tissues. The proteins eventually become so entangled that they can not be broken down and spread in the fluid. However, the body is such a complex and wonderful system that sometimes these proteins get trapped in the tissues instead of being spread. Over time the protein build-up begins to cause disease.

Since the proteins are stuck, and the virus is dead, the host cell can repair the damage that the virus has caused. However, since the proteins are attached, the process can be a bit messy and slow. This is when the replicating virus needs to reproduce again. The virus then becomes the immortal one we know because it continues to replicate itself and continue to damage healthy living organisms.

Now we know that the DNA strand remains the same throughout a human’s entire lifetime. However, due to its location on the genome, the DNA changes when the virus enters the body. Sometimes the DNA is left in the host cell alone, unaffected by the virus, while the rest of the genome is moved to the invading cellular organism. When this happens, the viruses moves into the dendritic cells and uses them to reproduce themselves. These cells form a part of the dendritic network which contains millions of DNA strands.

In order for this network to replicate and continue to divide there must be something that keeps the particles in motion. In most cases it is gravity. If the particles do not move in the dendritic network, they will eventually stop reproducing. This is what makes the virus go immortal. Once a virus has entered the dendritic cells, without anything to keep the particles in motion they will cease dividing. Then the immortal virus will replicate itself into thousands of different viruses, leaving the healthy cells behind.