how did the virus come to be?

Question

it is considered both living and non-living and so how could it have evolved from a living thing?

i don't actually believe in evolution, i'm just curious to see what you come up with.

Answer 1

It's hard to imagine a virus succeeding without a cellular host to provide for it's metabolism, etc... Yet ironically, we make the assumption that the first forms of life were self replicating nucleic acids without any cell structures.

There are two schoools of thought on the origin of viruses. One suggests that viruses degenerated from cells, becoming totally dependent on their hosts. This is definitely true for many viruses, particularly DNA viruses. The other theory suggests that viruses, in particular RNA viruses, were the first form of life.

Bottom line, we don't really know.

Answer 2

2

Answer 3

Virologists consider them non-living only in the sense that they cannot self-reproduce (replication involves infecting a host cell - they use the metabolism and machinery of that host to make multiple copies), nor are they made up of cells. However, they are made up of genetic material with a protective protein covering. DNA and RNA are found in every virus but generally a species will not contain both. There are currently no fossil records for viruses, but research in molecular biology and microfossil identification may yet discern evidence of it dating back to the Archean or Proterozoic eons.

Two hypotheses (from Wikipedia):

* Small viruses with only a few genes may be runaway stretches of nucleic acid originating from the genome of a living organism. Their genetic material could have been derived from transferable genetic elements such as plasmids or transposons, which are prone to moving around, exiting, and entering genomes.

* Viruses with larger genomes, such as Poxviruses, may have once been small cells which parasitised larger host cells. Over time, genes not required by their parasitic lifestyle would have been lost in a streamlining process known as retrograde-evolution or reverse-evolution. Both the bacteria Rickettsia and Chlamydia are living cells which, like viruses, can only reproduce inside host cells. They lend credence to this hypothesis, as they are likely to have lost genes enabling them to survive outside a host cell, in favour of their parasitic lifestyle.

Viruses are are an exception to the rule of cell theory. They are extremely simplistic - just nucleic acid with a protective protein coating and thus probably have not evolved much at all, not in the way you might be thinking you disagree with. This does not make them any less scientific. They are most likely from a molecule original to the air and earth. In U.S. Code, they are considered microorganisms. Scientists are torn between the living and non-living scenarios: If they are to be considered alive, then the prerequisites currently governing life must be changed to include forms of being that do not replicate using cell division.There a couple of bacterias, also, that cannot self-reproduce.

However, in relation to evolution: "Virus self-assembly within host cells also has implications for the study of the origin of life, as it lends credence to the hypothesis that life could have started as self-assembling organic molecules."

Molecules make up both living and non-living things but this doesn't mean they don't have the basic atoms which make up life - animate or inanimate. Remember: "Living" only refers to the criteria which makes it up currently. Our researchers and scientists have improved this world a thousand-fold throughout time. One cannot disprove the theory of evolution by believing that viruses didn't evolve. This may be true as they are such simple organisms, but it has very little to do with evolutionary theory.

All the best.

Answer 4

Viruses need life forms to reproduced they also reproduce very quickly and mutate a lot to create a whole type of virus. Cells also split and split quickly. I'm guessing it's a case of "when cell splits go wrong" early in the primal soup.

Answer 5

Viruses are basically good at invading other cells and eating them from the inside out. I think they were one of the first types of life on earth, because they are single-celled. So, they may not really have evolved very much at all.

Answer 6

Democrats have been around for about two hundred years.

Answer 7

I am totally lost here, what " virus " ?