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How viruses differ from other microorganisms?
 Viruses are much smaller (and simpler) than bacteria. They vary in size from 10 to 50 nm (nanometres).Viruses  grow  inside cells of other (true) organisms, so they do not (on their own) need food, etc. In fact they do not carry out most of the commonly accepted characteristic processes which other living organisms perform.
Viruses are simply packets of nucleic acid, either DNA or RNA, surrounded by a protein shell and sometimes fatty materials called lipids. Outside a living cell, a virus is a dormant particle, lacking the raw materials for reproduction. Only when it enters a host cell does it go into action, hijacking the cell’s metabolic machinery to produce copies of itself that may burst out of infected cells or simply bud off a cell membrane.


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