Are viruses life?

SpaceGuy50

Are viruses life?

Ygggdrasil

It depends on how you define life (which surprisingly is not very well defined).

DaveC426913

What are your thoughts on the matter?

symbolipoint

Do they perform metabolism, even if using a hosts organisms cells to do so?
Are virii irritable?
Can they reproduce?

If yes to all of those, then virus seems to be life.

DaveC426913

As a discrete unit, no.

As a discrete unit, no.

Virii corrupt living cells. Arguably, it is the living cells that is doing the irritation and reproduction.

Moridin

One of the main issues with discussions whether viruses are living or not, is that we are trying to establish a discontinuous, essentialist barrier on what is most probably a continuous transition. None of the proteins, carbohydrates or lipids in your body are alive, however, in certain configurations together with other building blocks, something we call life emerge on a higher level of analysis (but of course completely explicable from these basic building blocks; no particular elan vital or life force).

mgb_phys

Virii have inheritable traits that they pass on to their offspring so they are alive.
They can't reproduce without a host cell but lots of species can't reproduce without a host body, from tape worms to cuckoos.

DaveC426913

Logical phallacy: hasty conclusion. That is not the only criteria for life.
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granpa

all living systems depend on some external factors beyond their control for survival. we depend on the sun for energy. are we therefore not really alive?

reproduction and the ability to evolve are the 2 most basic necessities for life. but like all categories, inclusion within the category 'living' is not all or nothing. see the wikipedia article on 'fuzzy logic' for more on that idea.

CRGreathouse

I'd like to see some examples of creatures that can't reproduce on their own -- I'm sure there are some corner cases. That might be an illuminating comparison.

Grammar nazi alert:
1 virus, 2 viruses; 1 criterion, 2 criteria.

cesiumfrog

Whatever you say, Freud.

Moridin

Hard to evolve if you cannot reproduce.

DaveC426913

DaveC426913

Then you don't believe in:
1 forum, 2 fora
1 vox, 2 voxen

Andy Resnick

1 mongoose, 2 mongooses
1 axis, 2 axes

This is fun!

philnow

Every living this is dependent on something, as has been said. I don't think that virii require host cellular machinery is sufficient to rule out virii are "alive".

Really, this could all be straightened out if we had a better definition of life.

DaveC426913

But it's more than merely a dependency. Sorry, I can't back that up with facts...

(Sorry phil, but I gotta: ) This is kind of stating the exceedingly obvious. No discussion of "is a virus alive" in the history of the universe has gone more than 3 nanoseconds before resulting in the question "what is the definition of life"? And it's never been satisafactorily answered.