What are TMV and bacteriophage?
Explain economic importance of bacteria.
Classify viruses on the basis of host.
Answers
The key difference between bacteriophage and TMV is that bacteriophage is a virus which infects a specific bacterium while TMV is a virus which infects tobacco and a wide range of plants.
Viruses are tiny infectious particles that replicate only inside a living organism. They are obligate intracellular parasitesthat are capable of infecting almost all living organisms, including animals, plants, fungi, protozoa and bacteria. They are composed of a protein capsid and a DNA or RNA genome. The genome of the virus can be either DNA or RNA, single-stranded or double-stranded, circular or linear. A bacteriophage is a virus which attacks bacteria and replicates using bacterial replication machinery. Bacteriophages are the most abundant viruses in the biosphere, and they can have either DNA or RNA genomes. TMV or Tobacco Mosaic Virus is a plant virus. It infects tobacco and many other plants such as crops, ornamentals and weeds.