Live virus vaccines use a weakened virus to help your body fight the real disease. Some people, like those who are very sick or pregnant, should not get live virus vaccines. A live virus vaccine ...

Some viruses, like the common cold, are a flash in the pan. They infect us, our bodies fight back — which is what makes us sick — and then they’re gone, until the next variant rolls along. Other ...

Don't feel as if you're out of the loop if you're not up on the terminology of spillover viruses. In fact, one of the doctors we interviewed for this series on spillovers asked, "What is your ...

Besides serving as food for certain microbes, viruses perform some helpful functions that remain poorly understood. A ciliate, a type of single-celled microbe, swims next to Sphagnum moss, amplified ...

Viruses are ancient. They have been infecting animals, our ancestors included, for hundreds of millions of years before the first humans ever showed up. And the legacy of those primordial infections ...

Using genomics, evolutionary biologists test several hypotheses on the origin of viruses. New evidence suggests they may have emerged more times than previously thought. Corroborating the virus-first ...

There is an ongoing debate as to whether or not viruses are considered to be a life form. The question remains unanswered as the identity of viruses as a living form is dependent on arbitrary measures ...

First, let’s start with the basics. All living things have a genome. Genomes are made of DNA. Each of your cells has a copy of your genome packed inside of it. You can think of it like an instruction ...