- #1
SpaceGuy50
- 25
- 0
Are viruses life?
As a discrete unit, no.symbolipoint said:Are virii irritable?
As a discrete unit, no.scymbolipoint said:Can they reproduce?
Virii have inheritable traits that they pass on to their offspring so they are alive.DaveC426913 said:As a discrete unit, no.
Virii corrupt living cells. Arguably, it is the living cells that is doing the irritation and reproduction.
Logical phallacy: hasty conclusion. That is not the only criteria for life.mgb_phys said:Virii have inheritable traits that they pass on to their offspring so they are alive.
Whatever you say, Freud.DaveC426913 said:Logical phallacy
granpa said: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.
cesiumfrog said:Whatever you say, Freud.
Then you don't believe in:CRGreathouse said: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.
But it's more than merely a dependency. Sorry, I can't back that up with facts...philnow said: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".
(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.philnow said:Really, this could all be straightened out if we had a better definition of life.
what is your point exactly?Moridin said:Hard to evolve if you cannot reproduce.
SpaceGuy50 said:Are viruses life?
No - but it's a good oneDaveC426913 said:Logical phallacy: hasty conclusion. That is not the only criteria for life.
granpa said:what is your point exactly?
mgb_phys said:The question is of course - what is life? I was just putting forward one definition.
Origins and evolution of functional biomolecules. Life can be understood as a chemical system that links a common property of organic molecules—the ability to undergo spontaneous chemical transformation—with the uncommon property of synthesizing a copy of that system. This process, unique to life, allows changes in a living molecular system to be copied, thereby permitting Darwinian-like selection and evolution to occur. At the core of the life process are polymers composed of monomeric species such as amino acids, carbohydrates, and nucleotides. The pathways by which monomers were first incorporated into primitive polymers on the early Earth remain unknown, and physical properties of the products are largely unexplored. A primary goal of research on the origin of life must be to understand better the sources and properties of primitive polymers on the early Earth, and the evolutionary pathway by which polymerization reactions of peptides and oligonucleotides became genetically linked.
http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/roadmap/g3.html
Except that it is a definition of organic life.ViewsofMars said:Life can be understood as a chemical system that links a common property of organic molecules—the ability to undergo spontaneous chemical transformation—with the uncommon property of synthesizing a copy of that system. This process, unique to life, allows changes in a living molecular system to be copied...
There are self-catalysing chemical reactions for which this is true.Origins and evolution of functional biomolecules. Life can be understood as a chemical system that links a common property of organic molecules—the ability to undergo spontaneous chemical transformation—with the uncommon property of synthesizing a copy of that system. This process, unique to life, allows changes in a living molecular system to be copied,
Moridin said: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).
Yes. Without a host, they do not metabolize at all; they are nothing more than fragments of DNA in a shell. (Caveat: My facts may be out-of-date and this may be oversimplifying.)philnow said:Erm, so you're implying that they're "alive" when they infect a host but "false alive" when on their own?
//:phoenix:\\ said:Wouldn't that mean they are just pseudo life, in that they cannot live on their own? I would say viruses weren't living things but rather a type of false life as they can't live without infecting a host organism.
Parasites are still living creatures when they're not parasitizing. Phoenix's definition is too broad.CRGreathouse said:Wouldn't this mean that no parasites are living?
Viruses are just a length of DNA (or RNA) with a sugar coating.DaveC426913 said:If I understand correctly, viruses are chemically inert when they're not in a cell.
mgb_phys said:Since we can't live without them I suppose mitochondria could argue wether people are really alive!
//:phoenix:\\ said:Wouldn't that mean they are just pseudo life, in that they cannot live on their own? I would say viruses weren't living things but rather a type of false life as they can't live without infecting a host organism.
Virus - An infectious microbe that requires a host cell (plant, animal, human, or bacterial) in which to reproduce. It is composed of proteins and genetic material (either DNA or RNA).
http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/thenewgenetics/glossary.html
Microbes are single-cell organisms so tiny that millions can fit into the eye of a needle.
They are the oldest form of life on earth. Microbe fossils date back more than 3.5 billion years to a time when the Earth was covered with oceans that regularly reached the boiling point, hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Without microbes, we couldn’t eat or breathe.
Without us, they’d probably be just fine.
Understanding microbes is vital to understanding the past and the future of ourselves and our planet.
Microbes <my-crobes> are everywhere. There are more of them on a person's hand than there are people on the entire planet!
Microbes are in the air we breathe, the ground we walk on, the food we eat—they're even inside us!
http://www.microbeworld.org/microbes/
... MIT Professor Gerbrand Ceder of materials science and Associate Professor Michael Strano of chemical engineering, genetically engineered viruses that first coat themselves with iron phosphate, then grab hold of carbon nanotubes to create a network of highly conductive material.
Because the viruses recognize and bind specifically to certain materials (carbon nanotubes in this case), each iron phosphate nanowire can be electrically “wired” to conducting carbon nanotube networks. Electrons can travel along the carbon nanotube networks, percolating throughout the electrodes to the iron phosphate and transferring energy in a very short time.
The viruses are a common bacteriophage, which infect bacteria but are harmless to humans.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/techtalk53-21.pdf