flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

» How big are viruses?

book.bionumbers.org · 1,310 words · saved by 1 readers

Vignettes that reveal how numbers serve as a sixth sense to understanding our cells

>> How big are viruses? Cell Biology by the Numbers --> How big are viruses? Reader Mode Figure 1 – Geometry of bacteriophages. (A) Electron microscopy image of phi29 and T7 bacteriophages as revealed by electron microscopy. (B) Schematic of the structure of a bacteriophage. (A adapted from S. Grimes et al., Adv. Virus Res. 58:255, 2002.) In terms of their absolute numbers, viruses appear to be the most abundant biological entities on planet Earth. The best current estimate is that there are a whopping 10 31 virus particles in the biosphere. We can begin to come to terms with these astronomica

Explore this link on the map →

related reading