Are viruses alive yes or no?

Question

I found a lot of good information about viruse.
But I am undisided.
my book tells me that they are not alive
but my teacher sayies that they could be and maybe they should be in their own kingdom
Let me know if you think they are alive or not and WHY
if you know of a good site about viruse let me know
thanks

I you use word like "realy alive"
You need to tell me what you meen by that.
What is realy alive? What do you have to have or do to be alive?

how do people become infected with viruses. do we find the viruse or does the viruse find us.

Answer 1

Most virologists will tell you that viruses are alive and meet all the important criteria of life:


There are 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, have you ever seen a crystal structure of a virion

Metabolism - no

Growth - yes virus particles grow and mature in the host cell

adaptation (evolution) - very much 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 - agreed yes (by the way there Jon, viruses do have their own reproductive machinery, they encode their own replicases) They reproduce clonally, just like bacteria

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).

By the way, for the last guy, bacteria don't mate either. In fact lots of organisms reproduce asexually. And very few viruses insert their genetic material into the host.

Answer 2

2

Answer 3

Good question! Unlike bacteria, fungi, and parasites, these things can either consist of RNA or DNA strands. What's interesting is that they seem to be lifeless until they come into contact with certain life forms. I would speculate that viruses are not really alive and activate under certain conditions- just like a robot or some kind of preprogramed device that does a certain task only under certain conditions. I think that they are not alive because of the above reasons- they only move and function within another organism's body. They are more like some kind of sophisticated technological biological weapon than a life form.

Answer 4

i am taking bio at my college. so there's no need to be "decided," because there is a specific classification for viruses' state.

viruses are neither alive nor dead.
they lack several of the functions that are required in the definition for living, but still maintain functions that are necessary for life. look up the definition for life and you'll see how viruses do not meet the requirements.

whoever answered the question by saying that virus=bacterium is completely wrong. they are separate entities, proven partly because viruses cannot be cured and bacterial infections can.

Answer 5

I say no, but your teacher represents a wing of biology, probable those no good cladists, who want to expand kingdom classification in this direction. Without " real " life, viruses would be in big trouble.

PS The ability to replicate with your own replication machinery. The ability to have you own energy producing metabolism. The ability to reproduce, whether parthenogeneticly. sexually or clone. These are some of the "real life " criteria. Not all are met by all organisms, but viruses meet none of these criteria.

Answer 6

I can communicate with them. They say they have the right to live also.

It depends how you look at it:

Yes - They reproduce which is a definite form of organization. True, they can not do it on their own, yet all living systems are open systems and depend upon their environment for survival. It is just that the environment a virus requires is another living cell. This is actually true for many symbiotic and parasitic cells.

No - A virus is not a living machine . It is only part of a machine, namely the blueprints. The virus only provides the plans, the cell has done the real living work. Outside of its host the virus shows no living qualities.

http://www.mrs.umn.edu/~goochv/CellBio/lectures/virus/virus.html
I'm more to the yes side

Answer 7

NOp,., the viruses act like molecules pure biochemical reactions., when viruses into a cells are recognize by the molecular machinery of cell and ocupes it. so, it interfer whith the correct funtion of the cell causing a disease or another thing

Answer 8

viruses multiply, correct.? That makes them alive. I read the web site on theory of viruses being dead like stones. Stones don't multiply.

Answer 9

Yes - They reproduce which is a definite form of organization

Virus are alive - they can move around, they can identify and attack your body's cells and be specific about it. They're definitely not just
floating around like space debris.

Answer 10

Well they're alive but active only within a host cell
that's why they say that they're not