Virology is the scientific study of virus– submicroscopic, parasitic organisms of genetic material contained in a protein coat – and virus-like agents. It focuses on the following aspects of viruses: their structure, classification and evolution, their ways to infect and exploit host cell for reproduction, their interaction with host organism physiology and immunity, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy.
Virology is a subfield of microbiology.
The identification of the causative agent of tobacco mosaic disease (TMV) as a novel pathogen by martinus beijerinck (1898) is now acknowledged as being the official begining of the field of virology as a descipline distinct from bacteriology .He realized the source was neither a bacterial nor a fungal infection , but something completely different. Beijerinck used the word virus to describe the mysterious agent in his 'contagium vivum flluidum' (‘contagious living fluid’).Rosalind franklin proposed the full structure of the tobacco mosaic virus in 1955
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