Question

What are the advantages and disadvantages of viruses?

Answer 1

Hint: Viruses are microscopic infectious organisms that can only multiply inside a host cell and are non-cellular. Viruses cannot be classed as either living or non-living organisms from a biological standpoint. This is owing to the fact that they share some distinguishing characteristics with both living and non-living species.
A virus is an infectious non-cellular organism made up of genetic material and protein that can only infect and reproduce within the living cells of bacteria, plants, and mammals.

Complete answer:
1. Advantages:
Viruses are employed in gene therapy, to genetically modify individual somatic cells, and to produce transgenic plants and animals.
Viruses are utilised as nanoscale templates for arranging materials.
Bacteriophages in the sewage have the potential to deconstruct the high bacterial level in a systematic manner.
Bacteriophages, for example, play a significant role in marine ecology and carbon cycling.
Viruses have contributed important insights into various elements of cell biology.
Viruses are also utilised in virotherapy, in which they are used as vectors to treat a variety of ailments.
2. Disadvantages:
HIV, chickenpox, influenza, and other diseases are all caused by viruses.
Viruses spread from person to person via the air.
Viruses have the potential to multiply, and as a result, they can cause fatal infections such as HIV.
Hosts who have chronic viral infections can carry infectious viruses for the rest of their lives.
They can be transferred vertically, as in the cases of hepatitis B and HIV.
Viruses have the ability to cause cancer in humans and other animals. Human papillomavirus and hepatitis B virus genotypes contain viruses that cause cancer in humans.

Note:
Properties of virus-
They are non-cellular organisms encased in a protective protein coat.
Spikes make it easier for the virus to connect to the host cell.
These viruses are incapable of proliferating, growing, respiring, or metabolising without any host.
They have a nucleic acid core made up of DNA or RNA and are encased in a capsid, which is a protein shell.