by Rob Phillips and Ron Milo — Viruses pro­lif­er­ate by in­fect­ing cells and hi­jack­ing their repli­ca­tion and pro­tein syn­the­sis ma­chin­ery. Af­ter new vi­ral pro­teins are syn­the­sized and as­sem­bled, bursts of viruses are re­leased from the in­fected (and usu­ally soon to be dead) cells, start­ing the process all over again...