The largest viruses are bigger than bacteria? Which virus? I never heard
that (but then, I never studied virology).
--Nick
Graham Shepherd wrote:
> Smarty <smartman at comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:3cab7bd6.18969629 at news.in.comcast.giganews.com...> > Less than 500 milligrams
> >
>> An unusually unhelpful response.
>> You can get an approximation by calculating the volume of the organism from
> typical dimensions (eg for E.coli assume it's a cylinder 1 micron long with
> a diameter of 0.5 micron) and assume that the density is the same as water.
> (It is greater, otherwise you couldn't spin them down - but it's probably
> not much greater. You could determine the density on a gradient if it's
> critical).
>> A rough calculation indicates that the volume is about 0.2 cubic microns.
> That's 5,000,000,000 per cubic millimeter, or 5,000,000,000,000 per cubic
> cm. Assuming 1 gram per cubic cm, one bacterium weighs about 0.2 picogram.
>> Viruses are much more variable in size than bacteria (the biggest viruses
> are bigger than the smallest bacteria). But you could do the same
> calculation for a specific virus.
>> GS
