Viruses vs. Bacteria | What's The Difference?

 I'm grading today are on differences between viruses and bacteria and I have to tell you they didn't do so well I want to teach you the difference between viruses bacteria so maybe you can come and teach my students viruses and bacteria are what we would describe as germs and these are the germs that we think about when we think about getting sick and people are often confused between bacteria and viruses but they're actually very different than each other they do have some similarities so let's think about the similarities first they're both microscopic meaning very very small so we need a microscope to see them they both do cause and can cause very severe illness they can cause illness in humans like us they can cause illness and animals like this little dog here and even plants have bacterial and viral illnesses that can be problems for them they're going to be different types of viruses and bacteria that infect the different species but they all can cause a lot of trouble let's think about some ways that they're different than each other so I said that they're both microscopic that's true but they actually are very different size-wise so bacterial cells are actually very large compared to viruses bacterial cells can be sometimes 200 times larger than viruses which is really interesting but again still both microscopic bacterial cells are very unique and that they are alive they're individual cells they're able to reproduce on their own so if we call our little M&M a candy of excuse me a bacterial cell this bacterial cell can be produced take one and then you make two out of that these two would then go on to make four and they're going to continue to reproduce in this way so they can reproduce on their own and then they can cause infections and people external cells are interesting too because they actually can be good for us we have bacterial cells that live all over our bodies on our skin there's bacterial cells that live in our intestines are called normal flora and actually really important they help us to break down food and even produce vitamins like vitamin K for us so they can be good too so these are bacterial cells so they are able to reproduce on their own versus viruses viruses are not actually living it's interesting that scientists classify them as something between Lizzie and non-living which is a really interesting place to be but these viruses the reason we say that they're in between living and non-living is that they need a host to reproduce so viruses they can live on door handles and they can live on hands and again if you shake hands with somebody you can pass a virus to some baby to sneeze and cough but once they pass from one person to another they actually have to get into a cell to reproduce and make more of them so here's an example this so this say this is your cell right you shook hands with somebody you touched your eye and now you have a virus that's invading yourself here's your little virus that's going to infect our cell so what the virus is actually going to do is attach to particular cells it's going to take this DNA that's inside the virus run that down into your cell and then what the virus virus take over the manufacturing equipment inside of the cell so inside the cell no more are we producing bacterial cells or any type of your own proteins but now we're making only viruses so it's essentially a virus Factory at this point so it's no longer performing functions for you then what happens is this thing is going to fill up with viruses so much so baby viral particles are going to fill fill fill until we get to the point one bust open and now we have all of these little baby viruses running around and they're going to go and infect another cell in your body so that's how viral infections spread in your body so viruses need a host cell to reproduce that's a major difference that we have how do we treat viruses and how do we treat bacterial cells viruses typically are shorter course of illness you're talking between two and ten days depending on how healthy the person was to start with bacterial illness is typically typically are longer you're looking at more more of a ten day to twelve day course for bacterial infections and then how do we treat them viruses can be treated only with antivirals so you can get those from the doctor but in general the best way to treat a virus is rest in soup and water and that's essentially it so viruses will be taken care of by your immune system if you rest and baby yourself for a little while versus bacterial infections bacterial infections are treated by antibiotics so antibiotics are actually really important in getting into and busting open those bacterial cells traditionally most colds and most things that are making you feel bad are viruses so some common examples of viruses woul be the Rhino virus which is the common cold that's the upper respiratory infection that most people get you have influenza which is a different type of virus that causes more severe fever body aches more all over that you feel that and then bacterial infections you're looking at things like there's a particular type of bacteria that causes ulcers hylia vector pylori can cause ulcers things that cause food poisoning Listeria Salmonella e.coli can cause food poisoning those are bacterial infections when you go to the doctor it's important that you understand that there are particular tests that can be done to determine do you have a bacterial infection or do you have a viral infection and the viral infections can only be treated with rest and hydration antivirals if necessary but bacterial infections are the ones that require those antibiotics so those are some major differences right we said that they're both microscopic they both can cause human illness so we need to have good hand-washing good hygiene to make sure that we don't pass those around but again major differences we're talking size-wize bacteria are very large compared to viruses which are very small and the types of infections that they actually create are going to be very different as well so hopefully you can use that information in your life and hopefully come and teach my students some stuff too.