What is the difference between bacteria and viruses?

Answer 1

Bacteria are single-celled organisms that exist throughout the environment. They live in water, soil, and the air. Bacteria live in and on all animals and plants. Some cause disease, some are beneficial and some have no known impact on the animals they live on or in.

Viruses are DNA or RNA, sometimes wrapped in protein coatings. They cannot survive outside a living cell. Viruses cannot reproduce on their own. They use the mechanisms of the living cells they infect to reproduce themselves and in the process they can damage or destroy those cells, causing disease to the animal or plant involved.

Answer 2

Viruses are different from bacteria in an enormous number of ways:

• Firstly, bacteria are cells and viruses are not. Viruses are composed of genetic information encapsulated in a protein coat.
• Secondly bacteria can usually reproduce on their own, whereas viruses (with some possible exceptions) must hijack the genetic machinery of other organisms in order to create more copies of themselves. Bacteria perform respiration (or photosynthesis) and exhibit growth, whereas viruses are made of preformed components stolen from host cells.
• Bacteria are unarguably alive, whereas viruses are considered to be intracellular parasites when they are attacking a cell and inert matter when they are not (there is still much debate as to whether or not viruses are alive).
• From a purely physical standpoint viruses are much smaller than bacteria (with exceptions such as the mama virus) and form plaques rather than colonies. They usually require an electron microscope to be seen with any detail, whereas most bacteria are readily visible under a light microscope.
• Viruses cannot live outside a host.
• Viruses are the smallest and simplest life form known. They are 10 to 100 times smaller than bacteria.
• The biggest difference between viruses and bacteria is that viruses must have a living host - like a plant or animal - to multiply, while most bacteria can grow on non-living surfaces.
• Bacteria are intercellular organisms (i.e. they live in-between cells); whereas viruses are intracellular organisms (they infiltrate the host cell and live inside the cell). They change the host cell's genetic material from its normal function to producing the virus itself.
• There are some useful bacteria, but all viruses are harmful.

Answer 3

Bacteria are prokaryotes and have no organized nucleus and other membrane-bound organelles.Prokaryotic cell size ranges from 0.1 to 5.0 μm in diameter.
For a long time people didn't believe that bacteria even existed. After all, they could not be seen. One scientist who firmly believed in the Germ Theory of Disease, ended up in a mental hospital because no physician believed him.
You can imagine that if people didn't believe in bacteria, the concept of viruses would have been a real stretch.
Viruses are not an organism at all. They are not alive. They are hijackers. Once they get attached to a living cell, they can take it over and "make" the living cell produce virus particles instead of cell parts.
These particles can assemble into more viruses and then they break out of the cell (killing it) and begin the process again. They cannot make more viruses on their own.
They are very very, small and can not be seen without an ultramicroscope.