Hey there! Here are 7 differences between a cell and a virus:
- A cell is a significant structural and functional unit of all living organisms. Instead, a virus is an infectious agent that is considered non-living.
- The cell is a living component, unlike a virus that is a parasite.
- Cells are present in a living form, on the other hand, the virus is present in both living and non-living
- A virus doesn’t contain any kind of cytoplasm, cell wall, cell membrane, ribosome or mitochondrion, whereas a cell contains all of these (depending on what kind of cell it is). Many viruses do not even have a membrane, often formed of only a protein capsid containing the DNA or RNA based genome.
- Cells can exist independently like bacteria or can be as a part of larger organisms like our own cells in the body. Viruses on the other hand are non-living infectious particles that are dependant on a living host to reproduce.
- Cells reproduce through binary fission and mitosis or meiosis. When a virus replicates, it uses lytic fission to do it
- Virus particles are slightly smaller than a cell.
Hope this helped. Explanations and examples are included within the points.
- profparis
