Explain why viral shapes are significant when it comes to host identification and infection.
Viruses are very small and can not be seen with a light microscope, except for the poxvirus, the development of the electron microscope enables us to view the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and other small viruses. Viruses were initially grouped according to their morphology but later they were classified by the type of nucleic acid they contain (DNA or RNA), the strandedness of nucleic acid(single- or double-stranded), and the molecular analysis of viral replicative cycles. For the universally accepted nomenclature of different viruses, the vernacular name of the virus is used but the word virus is replaced by genus names such as tobacco mosaic tobamovirus.
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