Virus

that's what i thought
so, would that not mean that life is a result of natural selection, as are viruses, but viruses are not life?

I would argue that 'life' and 'natural selection' are nearly synonymous. I would argue that being subject to NS is the most fundamental property of life. Crystals and soap bubbles can harvest resources, grow, and reproduce. Metals can 'sense' and respond to their environment (thermal expansion). Only living things evolve.

>implying evolution by natural selection is fundamentally different than consistent response to stimuli
I see no reason why metals and soap bubbles can't be considered alive in much the same way that viruses are alive

What is your argument for viruses not being alive?

>are viruses alive?

Doesn't matter because we are the ones who make the definition so it's whatever you want "alive" to be.

>Can they reproduce with each other?

The way they replicate is by entering into actual living organisms and using that cell's replication machinery. Some viruses can self-replicate.

>Can we distinctly tell them from bacteria

They are not even remotely similar.

>and do they have a mega structure they use to reproduce

I don't know what this means.

mega structure is any functioning mechanic that allows for use
In a case of a virus yes, it's rna

We don't a great definition for life in the first place. Conventional biology doesn't consider them living because they can't reproduce on their own and are totally dependent on a host for enzymes and resources to do so.

Viruses do evolve, but evolution is honestly just one thing that occurs with life, and it's not strictly required for an organism or species to be alive.They just happen to do so.

>are viruses alive?
No. Viruses dont have an energetic metabolism. This is a property that all living things have and that that all non-living things do not have.

Viruses do indeed have energetic metabolism. They hydrolyze host cell ATP to facilitate their own reproduction.

Humans can't reproduce on their own

>This is a property that all living things have and that that all non-living things do not have.
[citation needed]

Viruses aren't alive by our definition of life. They don't eat or develop. They're just genetic delivery machines

None, I think that viruses are alive. I'm trying to say that perhaps life is not a yes or no question, but instead different forms of matter can have different "amounts" of life depending on how they respond to stimuli and the amount of molecular interactions contained within their being.

I think that the idea of "life" has no real meaning, but it is an abstraction created by humans to try and rationalize the perpetual flow of energy that we see around us all the time.

>our definition of life
Who is us?
Do you know of some master definition of life that biologists are not aware of?

The real definition of life is that of agency.

Living things act as though they purpose. Even plants and bacteria behave as though goals they are working towards.

Since we can't measure or quantify this, it is not a definition that scientists can do much with, but agency is what most people instinctively associate with life.

Viruses are (wrongly) thought of as inert machines without agency, and this is why they are not seen as alive.

If you believe viruses are alive, then what about prions that cause diseases like mad cow disease and cjd - are they also alive?

I always assumed it was anything that could: reproduce, maintain homeostasis, grow, respond to the environment, and metabolize things.

What this user said.

The line between living/non-living and conscious/non-conscious is blurry.

However, most biologists that I know would not consider viruses as being alive.

For one, they cannot self-replicate without a host.

I'm a biologist (though not strictly a virologist) and I would consider viruses to be lifeforms.

If you look at textbooks, you usually get a list of attributes like in , but when you talk to virologists "off the record", most say they consider viruses alive.

The whole confusion about viruses being alive is because people conflate the virion (the extracellular virus particle) with the virus itself. The virion is only one stage in the viral life cycle.

In it's intracellular stage (virus factory), the virus harnesses resources, reproduces, maintains homeostasis, isolates itself in a defined physical space, responds to the environment, defends itself, and does other life-like things.

Viruses are snippets of dna. They can NOT reproduce without infecting a bacteria and using it's reproduction factories. Reasonably, they are not alive because they merely react as chemicals but without conscious thought that might choose to not react. Some of my best writing here has been deleted by pinheads: so much for this being a free and useful site to explore all possibilities, all opinions. But insulting people calling them fags, which is the worst insult possible, they don't delete. What's up with this?

>In it's intracellular stage (virus factory), the virus harnesses resources, reproduces, maintains homeostasis, isolates itself in a defined physical space, responds to the environment, defends itself, and does other life-like things.

This is the whole issue. I wouldn't define it as doing any of those things since it's not able to do these things without taking advantage of the environment it is in. It uses the cell it occupies as a way of meeting these standards but it's not actually capable without a cell.

>it's not able to do these things without taking advantage of the environment it is in.
A cell cannot conduct life without harnessing IT'S environment either.

You can write a computer program that uses an evolution algorithm to produce something. Is that data "alive" then?

By those criteria you have to consider mitochondria in their current state to be alive too.

not that guy but they used to be a separate unicellular lifeform before they were indoctrinated as parts of most cells now, so that isn't necessarily incorrect, it's part of endosymbiosis

I say they're not alive because they are inextricably linked to their hosts. To a greater degree than a parasite.

Is it true AIDs isn't real and nobody has an actual image of it except for computer theory models?

>AIDS isn't real
What? If you mean it isn't independent from the HIV virus, that's true, as AIDS is only the complications faced by a HIV victim whose immune system has been compromised by the virus. There are plenty of photos of HIV, as AIDS is only HIV once a patient infected with HIV becomes infected by another pathogen.
medpic.org/picture/3/hiv_(human_immunodeficiency_virus).jpg
cell.com/pb/assets/raw/products/pictureshow/hiv/101r.jpg (HIV in red)
rinr.fsu.edu/summer2004/images/hiv2.jpg
indigo.com/images/products/Electron-Microscopy-PhotoCD-Image-Database-SEM-TEM-micrographs.jpg
c8.alamy.com/comp/E5PTK2/scanning-electron-micrograph-sem-of-human-immunodeficiency-virus-hiv-E5PTK2.jpg

The question is pretty meaningless.

They are what they are. Our classification of them won't change anything.

>Are viruses alive?
No.
>Can they reproduce with eachother
No.
>can we distinctly tell them from bacteria
Yes.

Veeky Forums is such a fucking trash board, holy shit. Would benefit from some serious quality control.

Mitochondria evolved from archea and were assimilated into larger cells so one could argue that they are in fact alive.

How do intracellular viruses defend themselves?

You dont know basic biology?

>Can they reproduce with eachother
No viruses can't reproduce with each other, they only reproduce by their host.
>can we distinctly tell them from bacteria
yes of course? viruses are 100x smaller and they dont have cellular structure.
>Are they alive
No. No cellular structure, no metabolism.

Think of viruses as of separated genetic material which is hijacking living (or sometimes even dead) cells into reproducing itself.

>Self-replicating RNAs
such thing doesnt exist therefore RNA world hypothesis is completely useless

dont listen to this retard he is obviously a fucking vir*logist obsessed about his retarded pieces of nucleic acids

viruses are not and will never be any alive

SRRNA that didn't evolve to become life as we know it is probably extinct because it lacks defensive capabilities and speed of replication. Can't compete or survive in this bare state.

Animals need air and warmth and must kill other life to flourish. They, too, can't survive independently.

this

No. If life is comparable to a computer, a biological virus is basically just harmful code.

duuude thats so deep man

Yeah because comparisons are supposed to be ebin and brofound :DDD