Why Viruses Are Alive

Unlike bacteria, that have everything it needs to reproduce, viruses need to use a living cell's organelles in order to replicate.

One of the most complex and unexplored disease causing agents are viruses. They are known to be able to infect a wide array of organisms, from plants and animals, to bacteria and fungi. Essentially, anything that is living is capable of being infected with a virus. Once the host's cell is infected, the viruses' goal is to produce more viruses which will infect neighboring cells to continue the cycle.

There are many debates on whether viruses are living or nonliving cells. Viruses are organisms that infect living cells around its area. The characteristics of life describe a living cell and viruses only exemplify a few of those things such as adapting to their environment and containing a well-organized system. While viruses do portray some characteristics of life, they don’t reproduce, grow/develop, or display metabolism. Based on these viruses are not living.

Viruses are one of the oldest and most diverse creations in the world. Viruses which are obligate intracellular parasites are studied by many who try to understand them and try to prove how they work, where they come from and how to classify them. The Baltimore system classifies them by how they replicate and the composition of their genome but classifying viruses is quite difficult. Viruses are not able to replicate on their own and require a host in which they hijack their cellular machinery and use it to their own benefit in making their own viral cells. Some viruses carry enzymes along with them such as reverse transcriptase to perform reverse transcription. Some they are finding are able to replicate to a small degree on their own so in the future they may not be classified as nonliving and they may find their own domain among our studies. All viruses have their own way to infect a host but all need a host as of now. How did these entities come into existence? This is exactly what I will talk about; I will explain the three theories of the origin of viruses as well as some remarkable aspects of their current evolution and some of the many ways they thrive and continue to exist even when they can’t exist without an organism.

After researching this controversial question, I have come to the conclusion that viruses should be considered dead. My rationale is due to the simple fact that in order for something to be considered living, it needs to have the essential characteristics of life. These characteristics include growth, homeostasis, and the ability to reproduce as outlined below:

It is often argued whether viruses are living or not. Those who don’t believe that viruses are living generally base their opinion off of the fact that they do not follow the basic definition of “life”. They do not carry out life-sustaining functions on their own like normal organisms. On the other side of the argument, some believe that viruses are in fact, living beings, which is where I rest my opinion.

Personally, I believe that there cannot be a present scientific answer, but a philosophical answer. First, there are a few things I would like to point out on which the author of the article is wrong. According to Science Line , viruses are considered to be non living. It says that, “Primarily, they lack the ability to reproduce without the aid of a host cell, and don't use the typical cell- division approach to replication.” That means that there is no present gray area, and the main consensus says that they are non living. In the article, it says that, “[Viruses] May be destroyed… viruses resemble seeds more than the do living cells.(103)” That entire statement is false. According to Dr. Mikhail Grinberg, viruses are, “Generally incurable, but

To begin, viruses require a host to survive and replicate and transfer from on organism to another. For example, the HIV virus can be transmitted by bodily fluids infected with the virus such as blood, sperm, seminal fluid, and breast milk. All in which contain some form of cells for the virus to replicate itself in order to survive. If the host body were to die, all of the cells would eventually die as well, causing the virus to lie dormant.

The biological significance of this article is due in part to the fact that viruses are being considered as partway-living things. Even though they are only halfway living, per se, they are still an important part of the study of living things because of the unique way in which they “live” and continue to reproduce by taking advantage of host cells. The information in this article relates to biologists in that viruses provide an entirely different element of potential life, as they are a cause for reconsideration when it comes to defining and determining life and non-life forms. This

They also need to consume nutrition. So then we use the characteristics and functions of life to determine if virus are alive or not. Viruses are tenacious and infectious agents that only replicate and live inside other living cells of all kinds of creatures. They can infect many kinds of life. Based on the above criteria, viruses are not alive,

A virus is a microscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of other organisms. Viruses can infect all types of life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. A 2013 study done by Center for Infection and Immunity, Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York estimates that there are over 320,000 mammalian viruses. There are many different ways to contract a virus including: airborne, bodily fluids and ingestion. Once the virus enters your body it goes through five stages of infection: absorption, penetration phase, replication, assembly, and release.

Viruses can have either DNA or RNA and it can be Double Stranded and single stranded for viruses. The function of a virus is to replicate itself or reproduce ; Ex; Hepatitis A has RNA and Hepatitis B has DNA as genetic material. Viral Capsids are protein shell made out of protein shell made out of proteins.

My claim is that viruses are not living things. First of all, they do not match all six characteristics of life, which explain that living things are ‘made of cells, they reproduce with DNA, grow and develop, use energy, respond, and evolve.’

Viruses Viruses are like software viruses in computers, if there is no computer, there will be no computer viruses. They make copies of DNA and then take the DNA to make mRNA and then make proteins which encloses the DNA. Viruses spread using cells so without a cell they cannot spread. A virus is small, very tiny, it has an infectious particle that reproduces only by infecting its host cell. It hijacks its host cell and its resources, hence using it to make more copies of itself and making it an abode of making more viruses.

Over the years scientists have debated whether viruses are alive. Some scientists have argued that viruses are not alive . On the other hand, other scientists say that viruses are life forms and should be classified into its own kingdom. But many scientists have concluded that things must have the seven characteristics of life to be considered an living organism, which are