Bacteria and Viruses Word Search
This puzzle covers both kinds of germ: the bacterium, a living cell shaped as a coccus, bacillus or spirillum, and the virus, a bundle of genes in a protein capsid, with the antibiotic and vaccine that fight them.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek saw bacteria first, in the 1670s, through lenses he ground himself, and called the moving specks animalcules. Bacteria are prokaryotes: single cells with no nucleus that split in two, some every twenty minutes. Most are harmless or helpful, in soil, yogurt and the human gut. Viruses are not cells at all. They cannot grow or copy themselves until they enter a host cell and take over its machinery.
That difference decides the cure. Alexander Fleming noticed in 1928 that a mold on a petri dish had killed the staph bacteria around it, and the penicillin it made became the first widely used antibiotic. Antibiotics do nothing against a virus, which is why a cold or the flu is not treated with them. Viruses are held back by vaccines instead, an idea that began with Edward Jenner and cowpox in 1796 and ended smallpox, declared gone from the world in 1980.
Free Bacteria and Viruses Word Search Online Game
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Bacteria and Viruses Word Search Printable Puzzles
Three sheets to choose from, free to print or download as a PDF. Pick a difficulty below, or open the printable Bacteria and Viruses word search page to see all three together, generate a fresh grid, and check the full word list.
Hard
15x15 grid, up to 23 hidden words
Print or Download pdfMedium
12x12 grid, up to 15 hidden words
Print or Download pdfEasy
10x10 grid, 5 words across and down
Print or Download pdf
Puzzle Vocabulary Words
Below you can see all possible words that the topic Bacteria and Viruses has.
Depends on difficulty level you select in the game amount of words hidden in the puzzle will be different.
In Easy game you have to find up to 5 words, medium game can have up to 15 words and hard puzzle can have up to 23 words.
Every time you start a new game - our word search generator will pick random words to build the puzzle.
- Agar
- Antibiotic
- Antibody
- Bacillus
- Bacteriophage
- Bacterium
- Capsid
- Coccus
- Colony
- Decomposer
- Envelope
- Fleming
- Germ
- Gram Stain
- Host
- Immunity
- Infection
- Influenza
- Jenner
- Koch
- Leeuwenhoek
- Lytic
- Measles
- Microbe
- Pandemic
- Pasteur
- Pathogen
- Penicillin
- Petri Dish
- Plasmid
- Polio
- Probiotic
- Prokaryote
- Rabies
- Smallpox
- Spirillum
- Strep
- Toxin
- Vaccine
- Virus