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.

Most viruses compete with other regarding survival, and most viruses won't tolerate each other in their territories. For this reason, viruses are thought to be the most aggressive creatures within the microscopic world. However, some viruses do actually respect other species too, especially if said species is a much stronger species or a member species of the Great Four. In some cases a virus may experience a primal fear of an another virus.

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. 99% of virions are heterosexual too, but being non-hetero may occur more in one species than the other. This is in contrast to bacteria, which are always female by default and 99% of bacterial cells are non-hetero. In more extremely rare cases (1% in each virus species), an individual virion may identify with/as a different gender or as non-binary too.

Viruses smell bad... REALLY bad! Think of a corpse in an already far decomposing state (or rotting potatoes, because that's a similar smell). Though, while cells think that every virus has that same rotting smell, every species of course has its very own distinctive scent. Because it is more important for viruses to recognize the scent of an another species in their territory, different species can differentiate between each other's scents quite easily. A virus thinks it smells fine, but it thinks of the scent of a different species as bad.
Especially the leader of a group smells the strongest. The leader produces pheromones that suppress the personal scents of the lower placed virions, so he can place so called 'scent-flags' on his virions. These scentflags function as the leader's ID cards in case there might be an another nest somewhere. This way, the two groups can meet each other's leaders, without actually having to see each other in person.

Species

Only species that actually appear in Virus Attack (be it either physically or in a flashback, dream or only mentioned) are listed here!

SARS-CoV-2 (has most detailed lore because it is the main antagonist!)
Influenza A H3N2
Rhinovirus
Ebolavirus
SARS-CoV-1
Norovirus
Adenovirus-F-40
MERS-CoV
Adenovirus-F-41