Is a Prion alive?

Question

And is a virus alive?

Answer 1

Prions are not alive; they are essentially proteins. As for viruses, you will never get consensus! I personally like an argument that arises from Richard Dawkins' explanation of the earliest life forms. He argues that it does not matter to "know" when those early organic molecules first went from inanimate objects to living creatures; they just did. By extension, I would say that it does not really matter if a virus is alive (by our ever-changing definitions of life) or not. It has certain properties and certain effects in nature, and it will continue to have these whether we call it a life form or not! :)

Answer 2

Virus to be simple are macromolecules which exist inbetween a living and non living entity and its alive i.e active when inside appropriate host eg: a plant virus is alive when its infected to a plant cells and not to mammalian cells

Prion on other hand act via mechanism of affecting sterospecificity and selectivity of existing nearby proteins and are not self replicating as many think :)

Answer 3

A prion is said to be mainly proteinatious in nature and thus not a living thing, a virus however can be DNA or RNA and is argued by many to be a living organism, however it can be argued that it is not since it relies mainly on mechanisms of host cells it infects to reproduce itself. Without a host cell, the virus displays no characteristics of a living organism.

Answer 4

Outside the body neither is alive.