Virion
An infectious virus particle.
Virulence
The relative ability of an organism to cause disease.
[edit] Virion assembly
Diagram of bacteriophage structure
In the case of the T4 phage, the construction of new virus particles involves the assistance of helper proteins.
Virion
Complete infective form of a virus outside a host cell, with RNA core and a capsid ...
The virions attach to the surface of their host cell (a).
The proteins of the capsid inject the DNA core into the cell (b).
TYPES OF VIRUSES
As you go on to study more biology, you'll see many virus types. There are three basic shapes.
1) First there are helical virions. They are set up like a tube. The protein coat winds up like a garden hose around the core.
The structure of the influenza virus (see Figure 1) is somewhat variable, but the virion particles are usually spherical or ovoid in shape and 80 to 120 nanometers in diameter.
The virions have a diameter ~18nm and an inner hole ~2nm. The protein coat consists of 158 aminoacids which are assembled into four main alpha-helices, which are joined by a prominent loop proximal to the axis of the virion.
10 billion HIV-1 virions are generated daily, with a rate giving one mutation for each new genome of 9,2000 nucleotides per replication cycle. Genomes with every possible mutation and many double mutations are generated daily.
 See also: Virus, Cell, Protein, Host, Trans
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