the tinyblog

Right after I talked about viruses, I just found this tremendous Discover Magazine article about what modern science knows about viruses.

From the article:

Viruses come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees of sturdiness, and with all manner of strategies for getting at the cellular machinery they lack. Some batter-ram their way through the outer cell membrane. Some meld their membranes with a cell's and then suddenly revolve, like those faux bookcases in the movies, into the sacred chamber. Still others gain entry by disguising themselves as the sort of free-floating molecules that our cells routinely gobble up.