Geek Out: Viruses, Variants and eVolution.

Computers can’t distinguish:

This is where anti-virus software comes in, it is able to recognize (many of) those viral 1’s and 0’s patterns, but that’s for a whole different type of blog reader!

Piece of code:

Yes, it’s a piece of code (not a cell) but this genetic material is surrounded by a protective envelope – you’ve probably heard about the viral envelope enclosing the coronavirus (the SARS-CoV-2 virus) because it’s the covering covered in those horrible spike proteins.  The genetic information plus envelope make up a virus particle – the same particles that we cough and sneeze over each other.

instructions for the cellular processes keeping us alive:

We have genes are organized into chromosomes and located in a safe place inside the cell’s nucleus.  These genes are instructions that the cell can follow to make everything from a hormone to a protein to transport oxygen (a previous post, the genetic cook book looks at this in a little more detail).

You might be interested to know that arguably the most famous and most numerous cell of them all, the red blood cell, is not actually a cell as it doesn’t have nucleus, and so, no chromosomes and no DNA or genes (and that’s why it’s of limited use in forensic science when trying to catch a murderer!)