Are Viruses alive?

[oldpaddoboy]

OK, firstly I'm not that well up with the processes of Evolution, other then of course, that it is a fact. It it is the "theory of evolution "that is a work in progress., a point I have often argued with your Earth creationists and other religious folk.  My question concerns the debate on where viruses fit into all this. I have seen various papers discussing whether they are even  life for Christ's sake! Yet the world spent more then 2 years trying to kill the little bastards. So how do we kill something that isn't alive in the first place? Two questions there now, (1) Where viruses fit in, and (2) Any further research on whether they are or are not life.  

[Moontanman]

33 minutes ago, oldpaddoboy said:

OK, firstly I'm not that well up with the processes of Evolution, other then of course, that it is a fact. It it is the "theory of evolution "that is a work in progress., a point I have often argued with your Earth creationists and other religious folk.  My question concerns the debate on where viruses fit into all this. I have seen various papers discussing whether they are even  life for Christ's sake! Yet the world spent more then 2 years trying to kill the little bastards. So how do we kill something that isn't alive in the first place? Two questions there now, (1) Where viruses fit in, and (2) Any further research on whether they are or are not life.  

Viruses are quite complex, two basic types, RNA and DNA viruses but there are giant viruses that are large as some bacteria and you have tiny viruses that infect other viruses. 

Possible origins 

https://www.news-medical.net/health/Virus-Origins.aspx

Quote

Where Did Viruses Come From?

There are three main hypotheses regarding the origins of viruses:

The progressive, or escape, hypothesis states that viruses arose from genetic elements that gained the ability to move between cells;

The regressive, or reduction, hypothesis asserts that viruses are remnants of cellular organisms;

The virus-first hypothesis states that viruses coevolved with their current cellular hosts.

I personally tend towards the virus first hypothesis but no one asked me! 

Quote

Which Hypothesis to choose?

None of the hypothesis may be correct. To date, no clear explanation for the origin(s) of viruses exists. And so viruses could have arisen from mobile genetic elements that gained the ability to move between cells or they may have descended from previously free-living organisms that adapted a parasitic replication strategy or may have existed before, and led to the evolution of, cellular life.

This is interesting

https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/cells/viruses/a/are-viruses-dead-or-alive

I am sure there are many papers available but the ones I found were behind paywalls. 

This is just one source, feel free to find others, especially newer sources. 

[oldpaddoboy]

29 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Viruses are quite complex, two basic types, RNA and DNA viruses but there are giant viruses that are large as some bacteria and you have tiny viruses that infect other viruses. 

Possible origins 

https://www.news-medical.net/health/Virus-Origins.aspx

I personally tend towards the virus first hypothesis but no one asked me! 

This is intereWhich evolved first...Viruses or Bacteria? Did they both evolve from another previous life form? If so, then why the discrepancy of one being life and the other not life? My own non expert opinion, is they are of course life, but just a different form of life.sting

https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/cells/viruses/a/are-viruses-dead-or-alive

I am sure there are many papers available but the ones I found were behind paywalls. 

This is just one source, feel free to find others, especially newer sources. 

Which evolved first...Viruses or Bacteria? Did they both evolve from another previous life form? If so, then why the discrepancy of one being life and the other not life? My own non expert opinion, is they are of course life, but just a different form of life.

[Moontanman]

36 minutes ago, oldpaddoboy said:

Which evolved first...Viruses or Bacteria? Did they both evolve from another previous life form? If so, then why the discrepancy of one being life and the other not life? My own non expert opinion, is they are of course life, but just a different form of life.

The link I provided suggested it is not currently known how viruses originated, viruses before LUCA is one of the possibilities and the one I ascribe to but my view on this is irrelevant. The realm before LUCA, thought to be a world of chemical processes that reproduced but were not always contained in the same place (inside a cell) like they do today.

From what were nothing more than catalysts that left behind more than one copy of themselves after the catalyst has done it's job (The Deep Hot Biosphere) to actual bacteria, the time before LUCA was a complex system of replicating chemicals that interacted with each other and resulted in copies of the chemicals going on to create more of the chemicals but not until these chemicals were self contained in one micelle structure did we get bacteria and the relationship between eubacteria and archaea is not well known.

Which one came first or if they developed independently from the same chemical mess that defined the first life (sometimes called the metabolism first world) or the RNA world or a combination of both is not currently known. 

Unless of course panspermia works then maybe we just got a meteorite with an alien microbe on it and that would be LUCA and there were no processes on Earth that led up to LUCA. This would be improbable for many reasons and wouldn't answer anything having to do with the origin of life or viruses.  

 

 

Edited April 4 by Moontanman

[Vmedvil]

10 hours ago, oldpaddoboy said:

OK, firstly I'm not that well up with the processes of Evolution, other then of course, that it is a fact. It it is the "theory of evolution "that is a work in progress., a point I have often argued with your Earth creationists and other religious folk.  My question concerns the debate on where viruses fit into all this. I have seen various papers discussing whether they are even  life for Christ's sake! Yet the world spent more then 2 years trying to kill the little bastards. So how do we kill something that isn't alive in the first place? Two questions there now, (1) Where viruses fit in, and (2) Any further research on whether they are or are not life.  

The Definition of a living organism is below.

"In biology, it is generally agreed that organisms that possess the following seven characteristics are animate or living beings and thus possess life: the ability to respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and be responsive to the environment."

Link = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10123176/

"However, viruses lack the hallmarks of other living things. They don’t carry out metabolic processes, such as making the energy molecule of life, ATP, and they don’t have cells and therefore the cellular machinery needed to make proteins by themselves. The only life process a virus undergoes independently is reproduction to make copies of itself, which can only happen after they have invaded the cells of another organism. Outside of their host some viruses can still survive, depending on environmental conditions, but their life span is considerably shorter. This complete reliability on a host for all their vital processes has led some scientists to deem viruses as non-living."

Link = Are viruses alive? | New Scientist

Viruses are missing traits of Metabolism and require a host for reproduction, thus are not considered alive by many scientists. Viruses are described as below.

"A virus is an infectious microbe consisting of a segment of nucleic acid (either DNA or RNA) surrounded by a protein coat. A virus cannot replicate alone; instead, it must infect cells and use components of the host cell to make copies of itself. Often, a virus ends up killing the host cell in the process, causing damage to the host organism."

Link = Virus (genome.gov)

 

But Vmedvil describes viruses as Bio-nanotechnology rather than as something alive.

"Virus nanotechnology is the use of viruses as a source of nanoparticles for biomedical purposes. Viruses are made up of a genome and a capsid; and some viruses are enveloped. Most virus capsids measure between 20-500 nm in diameter."

Link = (PDF) Viral Nanotechnology (researchgate.net)

"During recent decades, bacteriophages have been at the cutting edge of new developments in molecular biology, biophysics, and, more recently, bionanotechnology. In particular filamentous viruses, for example bacteriophage M13, have a virion architecture that enables precision building of ordered and defect-free two and three-dimensional structures on a nanometre scale. This could not have been possible without detailed knowledge of coat protein structure and dynamics during the virus reproduction cycle. The results of the spectroscopic studies conducted in our group compellingly demonstrate a critical role of membrane embedment of the protein both during infectious entry of the virus into the host cell and during assembly of the new virion in the host membrane."

"Viruses, in particular bacterial viruses or bacteriophages, are the most abundant biological entities in the environment—estimates range form 10³⁰ to 10³² in total—and play a key role in controlling biological systems (Kutter and Sulakvelidze 2005). The advance in molecular biology over the past 50 years has been built in a large part on the study of bacteriophages. Restriction endonucleases, which form the basis of molecular cloning, were developed following studies of phage infection. Many phage enzymes provide tools for the molecular biologist studying cell replication, transcription, translation, and transport pathways. The technique of phage display has provided powerful methodology for identification and optimisation of ligands for antibodies and other biomolecules. In environmental studies bacteriophages have been widely applied as tracers and indicators of pollution, and for monitoring and validating biological filters (Trevor and Richard 2000). They are also a continuing challenge to fermentation and, in particular, the dairy industry, where phage infection can lead to commercial disasters. The most recent application of bacteriophages in novel engineered materials puts them at the forefront of new nanotechnology devices."

Link = Viruses: incredible nanomachines. New advances with filamentous phages - PMC (nih.gov)

Edited April 5 by Vmedvil

[OceanBreeze]

14 hours ago, oldpaddoboy said:

OK, firstly I'm not that well up with the processes of Evolution, other then of course, that it is a fact. It it is the "theory of evolution "that is a work in progress., a point I have often argued with your Earth creationists and other religious folk.  My question concerns the debate on where viruses fit into all this. I have seen various papers discussing whether they are even  life for Christ's sake! Yet the world spent more then 2 years trying to kill the little bastards. So how do we kill something that isn't alive in the first place? Two questions there now, (1) Where viruses fit in, and (2) Any further research on whether they are or are not life.  

To answer the question of whether viruses are living things or not, requires a precise scientific definition of life.

Anyone who is so inclined can argue over such a definition until the proverbial cows come home, and some arguments are more convincing than others. Then again, answering this question may amount to nothing more than a philosophical exercise; or the basis of a lively and heated rhetorical debate but with little real consequence.

Since this forum’s purpose is to foster lively discussion, I will oblige by continuing.

According to modern day cell theory all known living things are made up of one or more cells and the cell is the fundamental unit of structure and function in all living organisms.

Since a virus does not have a cellular structure, it fails at being a living organism, according to cell theory.

Now for the “However”, cells are themselves composed of many sub-celluar components, such as ribosomes, mitochondria, membranes, DNA and proteins which together carry out the processes of life.

One might ask whether those individual sub-cellular constituents are alive on their own or does life arise as an emergent property of a certain level of complexity, as the cell theory seems to be claiming.

While a virus fails to reach the same level of critical complexity as a living cell, it is made from the same fundamental, physical building blocks; the same complex biochemicals that cells are made of.

In fact, modern molecular biology rests on a foundation of information gained through viruses. Just one example: biologists have studied viral activity in host cells to determine how nucleic acids code for proteins.

Modern evolutionary biology now accepts viruses, because of their rapid rates of replication and mutation, are the world’s leading source of genetic innovation. Viruses directly exchange genetic information with living organisms.

Despite that recognition, most evolutionary biologists, and indeed biologists in general, still consider viruses to be inanimate, or “not fully alive” or “they verge on life”.

Of course, these viewpoints will never satisfy anyone who will only settle for a black or white answer but maybe such a definitive answer is just not possible at this point in our understanding.

[I should add that as a participant in NOAA’s marine research expeditions, I have had the opportunity to query a number of highly qualified marine biologists and other researchers about the classification of viruses as either living entities or inanimate bits of chemistry and the consensus view is they are the latter.]

[Vmedvil]

40 minutes ago, OceanBreeze said:

To answer the question of whether viruses are living things or not, requires a precise scientific definition of life.

 

Anyone who is so inclined can argue over such a definition until the proverbial cows come home, and some arguments are more convincing than others. Then again, answering this question may amount to nothing more than a philosophical exercise; or the basis of a lively and heated rhetorical debate but with little real consequence.

 

Since this forum’s purpose is to foster lively discussion, I will oblige by continuing.

 

According to modern day cell theory all known living things are made up of one or more cells and the cell is the fundamental unit of structure and function in all living organisms.

 

Since a virus does not have a cellular structure, it fails at being a living organism, according to cell theory.

 

Now for the “However”, cells are themselves composed of many sub-celluar components, such as ribosomes, mitochondria, membranes, DNA and proteins which together carry out the processes of life.

 

One might ask whether those individual sub-cellular constituents are alive on their own or does life arise as an emergent property of a certain level of complexity, as the cell theory seems to be claiming.

 

While a virus fails to reach the same level of critical complexity as a living cell, it is made from the same fundamental, physical building blocks; the same complex biochemicals that cells are made of.

 

In fact, modern molecular biology rests on a foundation of information gained through viruses. Just one example: biologists have studied viral activity in host cells to determine how nucleic acids code for proteins.

 

Modern evolutionary biology now accepts viruses, because of their rapid rates of replication and mutation, are the world’s leading source of genetic innovation. Viruses directly exchange genetic information with living organisms.

 

Despite that recognition, most evolutionary biologists, and indeed biologists in general, still consider viruses to be inanimate, or “not fully alive” or “they verge on life”.

 

Of course, these viewpoints will never satisfy anyone who will only settle for a black or white answer but maybe such a definitive answer is just not possible at this point in our understanding.

 

[I should add that as a participant in NOAA’s marine research expeditions, I have had the opportunity to query a number of highly qualified marine biologists and other researchers about the classification of viruses as either living entities or inanimate bits of chemistry and the consensus view is they are the latter.]

 

I tend agree with you, Oceanbreeze. It really does depend on your "Definition of life", but the general conclusion is viruses are not alive as you stated.

[OceanBreeze]

16 hours ago, oldpaddoboy said:

 Yet the world spent more then 2 years trying to kill the little bastards. So how do we kill something that isn't alive in the first place?

Precisely why viral infections are difficult to cure is the fact that viruses are not alive and therefore cannot be killed.

If the virus exists external to the human body it can be destroyed, not killed, by any number of ways. Simply washing your hands with soap and water destroys most viruses because the soap molecules wedge themselves into the lipid membrane and pry it apart.

Antivirals do not attack the virus itself; they work by suppressing the virus's ability to infect and multiply in your cells.  The usual mechanism involves inhibiting molecular interactions and functions in the cells, needed by the virus to produce new copies of itself, halting the attack. The virus is not destroyed and sometimes the infection can reoccur.

[Vmedvil]

10 minutes ago, OceanBreeze said:

Precisely why viral infections are difficult to cure is the fact that viruses are not alive and therefore cannot be killed.

 

If the virus exists external to the human body it can be destroyed, not killed, by any number of ways. Simply washing your hands with soap and water destroys most viruses because the soap molecules wedge themselves into the lipid membrane and pry it apart.

 

Antivirals do not attack the virus itself; they work by suppressing the virus's ability to infect and multiply in your cells.  The usual mechanism involves inhibiting molecular interactions and functions in the cells, needed by the virus to produce new copies of itself, halting the attack. The virus is not destroyed and sometimes the infection can reoccur.

 

This is also correct, for instance, reverse transcriptase inhibitors which are antivirals work by blocking the action of viral protein reverse transcriptase in HIV infection within the cell by stopping them from inserting the viral genome into the host cell's DNA and replicating the virus. You have to fight viruses on the genetic and proteomic level unless you get white blood cells to do it for you in the case of vaccines. This is all entirely correct, I can confirm, what Oceanbreeze said here.

"Reverse transcriptase inhibitors are medications used in the management and treatment of HIV. It is in the antiretroviral class of drugs. This activity reviews the indication, action, and contraindications for RTIs as a valuable agent in managing HIV (and other disorders when applicable)"

Link = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK551504/

Edited April 5 by Vmedvil

[oldpaddoboy]

8 hours ago, OceanBreeze said:

To answer the question of whether viruses are living things or not, requires a precise scientific definition of life.

 

Yes, I gathered and understood that. Sort of reminds me of the classification an defining of what a planet is and the demotion of Pluto!