Species - Viruses

Viruses are small, non-cellular agents. They infect every known lifeform, and every virus specializes in its own preferred host. Some even infect other viruses.
They're made of a protein capsid, sometimes enveloped in an extra layer of lipids, and they contain genetic material inside. They're basically just tiny boxes. Tiny boxes on legs in Virus Attack.

The viruses that have an extra layer are enveloped viruses, while the ones without are non-enveloped viruses. Enveloped viruses are sensitive to cleaning products, and thus easy to kill. Just washing your hands with regular soap kills most virions. Non-enveloped viruses are resistant to most cleaning products and thus hard to kill, but they're easier to be destroyed by immune cells because their capsid is less tough than that of enveloped viruses. In real life, viruses can be icosahedral, filamentous, rounded or even bottle-shaped, and they come in many different sizes. Some are almost as large as bacteria. In Virus Attack, same viruses appear in the form of monstrous animals or mythical creatures, but with traits of the actual virus incorporated into their designs.

Viruses can be small, medium or large sized. A virus is small when it won't grow larger than 99 nanometer. Medium-sized viruses are 100 - 499 nanometer and large viruses are 500 nanometer and larger.

Viruses can have either DNA or RNA. They can have different types of either DNA or RNA too, and they're sorted into different Baltimore Classification groups based on their manner of messenger RNA (mRNA) synthesis. List is shown below.

• Group I: double-stranded DNA viruses
• Group II: single-stranded DNA viruses
• Group III: double-stranded RNA viruses
• Group IV: positive sense single-stranded RNA viruses
• Group V: negative sense single-stranded RNA viruses
• Group VI: single-stranded RNA viruses with a DNA intermediate in their life cycle
• Group VII: double-stranded DNA viruses with an RNA intermediate in their life cycle

^{Source: Wikipedia.}

Because they can't regulate their own body temperature, viruses need to live in a main host with the for them right body temperature. But, every virus prefers different temperatures. Outside of a host, virions go into a state of torpor. When not inside a host for a long time, the virion will dry out and die

Viruses are obligated intracellular parasites because they lack their own reproductive mechanism and metabolism, and thus being fully dependent on a host to be biologically active. In real life, they're biologically active once inside a host-cell, but in Virus Attack, only being inside the main animal or plant host is enough to come op to the right temperature and start generating energy. The main host's cells are purely used for reproduction as the viral DNA/RNA will instruct the cell's reproductive system to copy it and create new virions. Most viruses have a lytic form of reproduction, while others are lysogenic. Lytic means that the young virions will be produced directly and are born several hours later. Lysogenic means that the DNA/RNA will lay dormant for a while, until something changes inside the host-cell's body. Lysogeny always changes to lytic if changes happen. Many bacteriophages are lysogenic at first.

There are three styles of birth for viruses; budding, apoptosis and exocytosis. In budding, the baby virions steal parts of the host-cell's outer membrane. This eventually causes necrosis of the cell's body and eventually death. Apoptosis is a programmed self-destruction in cells. Under normal circumstances, a cell will self-destruct once they reach the end of their lifespan, but there are viruses who are able to tell the host-cell to activate apoptosis in order to release baby virions. Exocytosis is just an another daily thing for cells. It's a way for them to get rid of waste material and the way they do this is similar to sweating. Because waste material is small, it isn't actually seen in the comic. When baby viruses are born by exocytosis, they actually demonstrate what the 'sweating of waste' looks like, but on larger scale. Exocytosis is similar to budding, but instead of stealing the outer membrane of the host-cell, these viruses steal both parts of organs to translate into viral proteins and the vesicles of the host-cell in order to develop an extra layer of skin. Though, non-enveloped use exocytosis too, but in their case, only parts of organs are used to create virions. Like budding, exocytosis eventually ends in the cell's death due to loss of body parts.

Most viruses have large litters, usually up to thousands. Though, litter size is different per species, and even within the same species, different virion have different litter sizes. Litter size may differ or change depending on an individual virion's size, age, health, status within his group or experience level. Some virions may have millions of young per litter. Because of their large litter size, their high growth rate, low survival among young (killed by immune cells), and the fact that surviving young grow up fast, viruses are R-strategists.

All viruses are male by default. This is in contrast to bacteria, which are always female by default.

Below are species descriptions. Almost all virus families are listed, but only members that infect humans are described. Some species don't have a design and/or lore yet, but are planned to be worked on. For this reason, they may either lack art or a description, or both.

Enveloped Viruses

Only members of the Orthocoronavirinae sub-family are actually known as 'coronavirus'.
Coronaviruses are medium-sized, positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses. They have six legs, three tails, and only the highest ranking virions have an actual peplomer crown on their heads. Virions always resemble modern day carnivorous mammals. They are the only viruses who use monarchy as government. They are lytic, young develop inside host-cell's endoplasmic reticulum and golgi system, and young are born via exocytosis.

D614G mutant virion.

Member of the Betacoronavirus genus and the Sarbecovirus (SARS-like coronaviruses) subgenus. It originally resembled a wolf, but since the rise of D614G mutants, it currently resembles domestic dog breeds. Virions usually are around 120 nanometer at the withers, but some may be smaller or larger. This virus emerged in China, in late december 2019. It quickly spread worldwide in 2020, and it managed to become a major pandemic. It killed millions of people. SARS-CoV-2 is the causative agent of COVID-19, a respiratory disease which may lead up to a deadly form of pneumonia, hypoxia and blood clotting. Its signature symptoms are the loss of smell and taste. Some people may develop 'long covid' (post covid syndrome), and seem to have symtoms long after recovery.

It nests in the lower part of the lungs. Like its cousin, SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2 is highly attracted to its host's ACE-2 receptor and thus binds to it to infect. Other receptors that it can bind to are CLR's, TLR's, NRP1 and GRP78. It mainly infects cells in the respiratory tract, both immune and non-immune. It can have up to millions of pups, which are born 24 hours after infection. In D614G mutants, pups are well protected and have a somewhat higher chance of survival than the wild-type form and other viruses.

This virus is the main antagonist in Virus Attack. It has its own page.

Non-Enveloped viruses