Så fungerar virus och en Wikisajt om fågelinfluensan

En kanontext om hur virus fungerar, och lite om fågelinfluensan också.

Killen kan verkligen skriva:

Perhaps they started out as errant bits of genetic material left adrift after the bungled replication attempt of a more complex cell. Maybe an ancient bacteria or Archaean came apart at the seams and fragments of it just wouldn't give up the ghost. Or possibly, in long vanished primeval seas simmering above countless volcanoes dotting the ocean with angry red mouths on an ancient water-world unrecognizable as Earth, there was an alien biome of RNA creatures in which viruses already thrived. They may have been with life virtually from the start in some form, or maybe they came much later. But regardless, somewhere, long ago, viruses came to be. And they've been improving their ruthless modus operandi ever since.

We arrogantly think of them as less than stupid, mindless, hapless bits of matter not even fit for the designation as a living thing. But these unassuming, quasi-organisms can bend the most complex animals on earth to their will and play us like a harp for everything we're worth. Viruses cleverly exploit all of the physiological processes we lofty metazoan creatures possess and hold dear, from the exquisite genetic machinery deep in every eukaryotic cell, to our kidneys, liver, blood, lymph glands, or brain: All of it is enlisted by a few strands of ribo-sugar peppered with nucleic acids to do their molecular bidding.

Det finns också en wiki om fågelinfluensan, det finns en sida om Sveriges beredskapsåtgärder, men den är rätt tom just nu.

Vetenskapsnytt har (som vanligt) en alldeles utmärkt artikel om ämnet.