Virus's: Life or non life?

Michael 345 · Oct 16, 2020

https://www.ck12.org/biology/Charac...son/Characteristics-of-Life-Advanced-BIO-ADV/

The seven characteristics of life include:

responsiveness to the environment;

growth and change;

ability to reproduce;

have a metabolism and breathe;

maintain homeostasis;

being made of cells; and

passing traits onto offspring.

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Life 01.jpg

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Life 02.jpg

Not all scientists agree exactly about what makes up life

Ain't that the truth

There is not just one distinguishing feature that separates a living thing from a non-living thing.

I think viruses should be in the alive listings (disclaimer - I am not a Scientist)

The link at the start is only for reference. There is no obligation to go to the article

Be aware if you choose to remain ignorant of the article

your crops will wither

Beelzebub will become your companion

herds of black cats will sing to you all night

all ladders you encounter will be positioned such that you cannot avoid walking and them

salt with remain stubbornly in the shaker and refuse to go over your shoulder

all mirrors you encounter will shatter

all of the above will be on your bright days

3:30 in the morning here. Back to sleep for me

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PS no comments, opinions or replies are required to this post and if any are made they will not be acknowledged

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Write4U · Oct 16, 2020

The above suggests that viruses are technically not fully alive because they are not cellular. Viruses are much smaller than cells and hijack the host's cells to propagate.

But IMO, a virus' active survival strategy to use the host's cellular mitosis to divide, should qualify it as a parasitic living organism.

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Ethernos 1997 · Oct 18, 2020

paddoboy said: ↑

I found the following, obviously reputable paper on viruses.

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-origins-of-viruses-14398218/

The Origins of Viruses
By: David R. Wessner, Ph.D. (Dept. of Biology, Davidson College) © 2010 Nature Education

Citation: Wessner, D. R. (2010) The Origins of Viruses. Nature Education 3(9):37
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How did viruses evolve? Are they a streamlined form of something that existed long ago, or an ultimate culmination of smaller genetic elements joined together?

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Figure 1

To consider this question, we need to have a good understanding of what we mean by "life." Although specific definitions may vary, biologists generally agree that all living organisms exhibit several key properties: They can grow, reproduce, maintain an internal homeostasis, respond to stimuli, and carry out various metabolic processes. In addition, populations of living organisms evolve over time.

Do viruses conform to these criteria? Yes and no. We probably all realize that viruses reproduce in some way. We can become infected with a small number of virus particles — by inhaling particles expelled when another person coughs, for instance — and then become sick several days later as the viruses replicate within our bodies. Likewise we probably all realize that viruses evolve over time. We need to get a flu vaccine every year primarily because the influenza virus changes, or evolves, from one year to the next (Nelson & Holmes 2007).

Viruses do not, however, carry out metabolic processes. Most notably, viruses differ from living organisms in that they cannot generate ATP. Viruses also do not possess the necessary machinery for translation, as mentioned above. They do not possess ribosomes and cannot independently form proteins from molecules of messenger RNA. Because of these limitations, viruses can replicate only within a living host cell. Therefore, viruses are obligate intracellular parasites. According to a stringent definition of life, they are nonliving. Not everyone, though, necessarily agrees with this conclusion. Perhaps viruses represent a different type of organism on the tree of life — the capsid-encoding organisms, or CEOs (Figure 1; Raoult & Forterre 2008).

Where Did Viruses Come From?

There is much debate among virologists about this question. Three main hypotheses have been articulated: 1. The progressive, or escape, hypothesis states that viruses arose from genetic elements that gained the ability to move between cells; 2. the regressive, or reduction, hypothesis asserts that viruses are remnants of cellular organisms; and 3. the virus-first hypothesis states that viruses predate or coevolved with their current cellular hosts.

The Progressive Hypothesis

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Figure 3

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Figure 2

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Figure 4

The progressive and regressive hypotheses both assume that cells existed before viruses. What if viruses existed first? Recently, several investigators proposed that viruses may have been the first replicating entities. Koonin and Martin (2005) postulated that viruses existed in a precellular world as self-replicating units. Over time these units, they argue, became more organized and more complex. Eventually, enzymes for the synthesis of membranes and cell walls evolved, resulting in the formation of cells. Viruses, then, may have existed before bacteria, archaea, or eukaryotes (Figure 4; Prangishvili et al. 2006).
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more at link............................

extract:
Summary:
Contemplating the origins of life fascinates both scientists and the general public. Understanding the evolutionary history of viruses may shed some light on this interesting topic. To date, no clear explanation for the origin(s) of viruses exists. Viruses may have arisen from mobile genetic elements that gained the ability to move between cells. They may be descendants of previously free-living organisms that adapted a parasitic replication strategy. Perhaps viruses existed before, and led to the evolution of, cellular life. Continuing studies may provide us with clearer answers. Or future studies may reveal that the answer is even murkier than it now appears.
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So [as illustrated in blue highlight] the question still abounds as to whether viruses constitute life as we know it, or non life.
I have always wondered why some don't see them as life...glad that others also think the same.
While understanding that science exists on stringent definitions, are they being to pedantic in not recognising viruses as life?
Click to expand...

What happens when virus also carry a gene that helps create atp?

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Write4U · Oct 18, 2020

This may address the organelle network which transports all the viral "information" from cell to cell and is active in cell mitosis.

Microtubules in Influenza Virus Entry and Egress

For more see; "Is consciousness to be found in quantum processes in microtubules" in the Pseudoscience sub-forum. Don't let that prefix "pseudo" fool you. It's serious science.

Dicart · Feb 20, 2021

Fungis are alive but their spores altought they come from their living cells are not.
So are the virus spores, a way to disseminate.
We name "virus" the spore but in fact the virus is the "infected" host.
An infected host (cell or bacteria) is not always killed by the infection (the real virus can stay alive), but as soon as he is trying to multiply he is killing himself (like other lifeforms that are dying soon they do their reproduction).

So yes this is not the mainstran point of view, but this is the point of view that Patrick Forterre (a french virus specialist) was explaining his students 25 years ago.

Here the same explaination :

According to Bandea’s hypothesis, the infected cell is the virus, while the virus particles are ‘spores’ or reproductive forms. His theory was largely ignored until the discovery of the giant mimivirus, which replicates its DNA genome and produces new virions in the cytoplasm within complex viral ‘factories’. Claverie suggested that the viral factory corresponds to the organism, whereas the virion is used to spread from cell to cell. He wrote that “to confuse the virion with the virus would be the same as to confuse a sperm cell with a human being”.

If we accept that the virus is the infected cell, then it becomes clear that most virologists have confused the virion and the virus. This is probably a consequence of the fact that modern virology is rooted in the study of bacteriophages that began in the 1940s. These viruses do not induce cellular factories, and disappear (the eclipse phase) early after cell entry. Contemporary examples of such confusion include the production by structural virologists of virus crystals, and the observation that viruses are the most abundant entities in the seas. In both cases it is the virion that is being studied. But virologists are not the only ones at fault – the media writes about the AIDS virus while showing an illustration of the virion.

Those who consider the virus to be the infected cell also believe that viruses are alive.
Click to expand...

https://www.virology.ws/2010/07/22/the-virus-and-the-virion/

Hercules Rockefeller · Feb 22, 2021

Ethernos 1997 said: ↑

What happens when virus also carry a gene that helps create atp?
Click to expand...

I don't know, what happens? Does any virus carry a gene that helps create ATP?

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Virus's: Life or non life?

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