Are viruses alive? Why a seemingly simple biology question prompts heated debate among scientists

[marmar]

Are viruses alive? Why a seemingly simple biology question prompts heated debate among scientists
According to some criteria, viruses meet the basic definitions for "life"; according to others, they don't

By MATTHEW ROZSA
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 26, 2022 2:00PM (EST)


(Salon) While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic may make it difficult to perceive viruses as anything other than agents of destruction, the mundane truth is that viruses are barely even living things. In fact, some biologists — most, even — do not believe that they actually count as living things.

How can this be so? After all, viruses like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, seem to have a horrifically efficient mechanism for reproducing themselves, suggesting they have a will to live. How could something with such a will to live not be — well — alive?

As it turns out, the question of whether a virus should be considered "alive" is one of the most fundamental in modern biology. Even today, scientists do not have a concrete answer — though they all have opinions.

"There is no single, consensus definition of life, and I doubt it is possible to develop a fully satisfactory one," Dr. Eugene V Koonin, the Evolutionary Genomics Group Leader and Distinguished Investigator at the National Institutes of Health, told Salon by email. Koonin said that while many scientists consider this question to be a "pointless, pseudo-philosophical exercise," Kooning does not personally perceive the question that way. Rather, it is "both interesting and useful for understanding the foundations of biology, and in a purely operational sense, to recognize life forms if and when candidates are discovered outside Earth," Kooning said.

....(snip)....

Dr. Jason Shepherd, an associate professor of neurobiology at the University of Utah Medical School, does not share Koonin's assessment about whether viruses qualify as alive.

"This is a classic question in biology, with the classic definition that something is alive if it reproduces, grows, and responds to external stimuli," Shepherd wrote to Salon. "The reason why people don't think viruses are alive is that they are parasites that need host cells to replicate." .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/12/26/are-alive-why-a-seemingly-simple-biology-question-prompts-heated-debate-among-scientists/

[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. Scientifically speaking the question is whether Jeebus/Yahweh/Allah/etc breathed life into them (nt)

[Pobeka]

5. Yeppers, so if a viris has no mouth it ain't alive, if it has a mouth it's a theological question!

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. To this medically uneducated person....

they seem pretty good at mutating. Like they learn from their environment and change their themselves in ways that insure their future existence,

[mike_c]

3. live/not live is not a simple dichotomy

Natural selection operates on viruses just like it operates on their hosts. Selection favors viral strains that simplify to the point of being unable to reproduce themselves. Indeed, many viruses likely began as genetic machinery within cells that selection subsequently isolated as infectious particles. Perhaps the term "infectious particles" is a better term than alive/not alive to describe viruses.

[IbogaProject]

4. Yep not everything fits into two catagories

Viri are somewhere in between, they use DNA or RNA to get a host to replicate them. But they don't mate like organisms. It amounts to "how many angels can fit on the head of a pin".

[ShazzieB]

7. Viruses don't reproduce sexually or asexually.

One-celled organisms, like bacteria, reproduce asexually, by producing a second copy of their own DNA and then dividing into two separate one-celled organisms, each with the same DNA.

Viruses can't reproduce on their own. They have to hijack a host cell and reprogram it to become a virus factory. That's why some say they're not living organisms. I tend to agree.

[IbogaProject]

11. Bacteria can transfer or receive genetic material

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/gene-expression-and-regulation/mutations-ap/a/genetic-variation-in-prokaryotes

[Walleye]

6. I have always suspected they were extra terrestrial

I think there is no such thing as a beneficial virus, right? like bacteria

[lostnfound]

12. Scientists are creating beneficial viruses. But even before that...

Viruses may be one way that random DNA pieces get carried from one species to another, on rare occasions, which could be good or bad or harmless.

This says 8% of our DNA probably got there from transduction — carried in by viruses.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/science/ancient-viruses-dna-genome.html

[Walleye]

13. That's very interesting, thank you. I remember the debate about whether they were alive or not

I always figured they were alive. And I guess they can create viruses or parts of viruses that are beneficial. I guess the feeling science is right on the brink of some breakthroughs here. Here’s hoping

[NullTuples]

8. IMO they're entropic; life on the other hand fights entropy.

They don't have the ability to use their own energy to perform work as all life does. They bump into a cell & the cell uses its ability to store energy at a loss by replicating them molecule by molecule. Then those new copies bump into more cells and the cells do it again.

[Solly Mack]

9. K&R

[Proud to be Woke]

10. Natural selection via mutation is not conscious

Mutations are not a conscious thing. All of us have mutations in our bodies. A few are visible but the vast majority are not. They get passed along and some are favored by the natural and artificial selection in the human populations. I guess a good example of mutations is domestic dogs, and artificial selection by humans of various mutations that occur naturally in dogs. In nature the ancestral dogs have the genetic capability to look like boxers, chihuahuas and collies but they don't. Why don't they? Because natural selection does not select in favor of these mutations. They occur but are not advantageous for the animal's survival. In North Carolina there is a "type", not, apparently, a recognized breed, called the Carolina dog. They are medium sized, short haired, perk ears, fairly long legs and blond in color. I have had two dogs that looked like them. These dogs are found in poor communities where they live a harsher life than suburban dogs and are allowed to breed as they will. The appearance of these dogs becomes more like that of the ancestral dog. Those genes are still there too.

[Walleye]

14. My theory of evolution is called the survival of the cutest