What is a 'Virus' and how does it form in the first place ?

Question

How is a virus a living and non-living at the same time and does it have a command centre like the brain ?

Answer 1

We don't know for sure where the first virus came from, but there are two popular hypotheses:

1) Viruses are the precursors of life. Before there was any life there were RNA molecules that managed a way to replicate themselves, and eventually protect themelves.

2) Viruses are degenerate from early forms of life. Some of the original early forms of life "lost" their ability to metabolize on their own and became simplified parasites.

Most virologists will argue that viruses are living (another point I'm going to keep posting in this forum until it sticks).

If you use the 7 characteristics of life: homeostasis, organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction...

Homeostasis - many bacteria don't maintain a stable internal environment, are they dead?

Organization - Viruses are organized, hence the crystal structure of a virion

Metabolism - no

Growth - yes

adaptation - definitely yes

response to stimuli - Viruses respond to stimuli, just not the stimuli you think of naturally. Viruses modulate their reproduction and life cycles based on the "stimuli" in the host cell

Reproduction - most definitely yes

So the only characteristic that viruses fail to qualifiy as alive for is metabolism, and it could easily be argued that metabolism is the least important and most arbitrar characteristic of living organisms since viruses do a fine job of gathering energy from their environment (host cell).

Viruses don't have "command centres" or brains, but neither do bacteria, fungi or plants.

Answer 2

It's very simple.

Living:
-Coz virus can do reproduction, this considered to be one of the charateristic of the living one.

Non-living:
-You can crystallize virus (Wendell M.Stanley from Rockefeller Institute did it in 1935!). There is no bacteria or any microorganism that can be crystallized like virus.

I think you mean nucleic acid, not exactly a brain.
Virus has 2 type of nucleic acid, DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (Ribonucleic acid). The virus' "reproduction strategy" is depends with its nucleic acid.

Click here for more information:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus

Answer 3

It's debatable whether it's living or not, or where it came from in the beginning. There's no brain, as viruses are generally extremely simple.

One way to think of it is a floating piece of DNA or RNA with special structures to inject themselves into cells or bacteria. The cell's natural DNA/RNA replication mechanisms are tricked into producing more of the viral DNA/RNA, which eventually destroys the cell and spreads the virus. Fascinating stuff.