Is a virus a life form? It doesn't seem to be living, it's barely anything but a protein chain...

Is a virus a life form? It doesn't seem to be living, it's barely anything but a protein chain, so what drives it to exist?

Viruses are considered not to be alive since they have no metabolism and cannot reproduce outside a host cell.

The only thing driving it to exist (if you can even say that) is to use a host cell's materials against it so more copies of the virus are produced. One interesting thing about this is that viruses that they'll invade a host cell leave a chemical signal outside of the host cell that tells other viruses not to invade that host cell and to find a new one.

*One interesting thing about viruses is that

Sorry. I've been drinking.

A virus is a transition between a chemical compound and a living organism

Nanomachines, son.

I would think of it more like a side effect of evolution, like a rounding error or something like that

he thinks that proteins aren't living lmao.

reality - rna can self replicates itself.

>One interesting thing about this is that viruses that they'll invade a host cell leave a chemical signal outside of the host cell that tells other viruses not to invade that host cell and to find a new one.
Fuck off space niggers, we're full

It's not living, like rocks.

>One interesting thing about this is that viruses that they'll invade a host cell leave a chemical signal outside of the host cell that tells other viruses not to invade that host cell and to find a new one.
More correctly, the chemical inhibits other viruses from entering the cell, meaning that they are more likely to enter others. Viruses don't 'choose' which cells they enter; it is literally just a matter of surface proteins interacting.

Rna != protein

Would it be possible to create a Silicon based viral organism? or would that just be a nanomachine?

"Life" is just semantics. Only difference between viruses and "life" is that they need a host to reproduce. So are parasitic wasps that lay eggs inside living prey viruses? Life doesn't exist, only self organizing molecules.

Viruses and cells are nanomachines. But they are evolved instead of engineered.

Where do they come from?
Are they produced by accident inside living organisms or do they spawn from thin air?

My bad, you're right. Protein is an artifact of self organizing molecules with information.

god damn those little fuckers creep me out

What stops people from using that chemical as the ultimate vaccine?

Impracticability of changing membranes of all of your cells

A virus us just DNA with wheels

How did they even come about? They don't serve any purpose, they shouldn't be. They're slightly intelligent molecules.

Random chemical reactions accidentally made some proteins that could enter a cell and program it to make more. There was probably one proto virus that mutated into all other viruses. Their purpose is to reproduce if you have to assign them one.

semantics

Pretty much.

>Viruses don't 'choose' which cells they enter; it is literally just a matter of surface proteins interacting.

Which is different from absolutely everything a living cell does how? Where/how do cells 'choose'?

Life is a meaningless and outdated concept that fails to account for perspectives at arbitrary scales. Saying there is no life is just as true as saying everything is life.

The definition is being reworked for viruses with the advent of the discovery of viruses that can infect viruses.

When you think of a virus you think of the pathogenic particle usually with a proteinacious coat and DNA or RNA inside. That is to a virus what a seed is to a tree, the real viral organism is what the cell that is infected becomes. Viruses have a host of interactions with biotic and abiotic factors, some viruses give resistance to environmental conditions and transfer of genetic material across species. At the end of the day the issue is that we don't have a good working definition of what a "living" organism is in the same way we don't have a definition of what a "species" is.


You are thinking of a prion.

>viruses might have sprung from different organisms
this shit is so creepy
like imagine your body physically creating AIDS like you're fucking zeus birthing a monster out of your forehead

The current concept of life revolves around the qualities exhibited by cell-based organisms, and even then, not all of those organisms meet these qualities.

As such, it isn't surprising that such a concept doesn't apply to nucleic acid-based organisms like virus and viroids.

a virus is a lot like fire
>both are dependent on living things/fuel to reproduce
>create copies of themselves by destroying their hosts
>die without a host
>is spread by finding new living beings/fuel to consume
now ask yourself this: is fire alive?

>die without a host
Viruses don't do this.

indeed, those bastards can sit for millennia entombed in the crust layers of the frozen permafrost waiting for warm cells to despoil anew

The area where life is created has been grey for along time. Thats because it's not black and white, it's grey. There probably isn't a difference as long as information is being stored.

>life doesn't exist
Edgy, I'll give that, but a citation would be appreciated. I believe there's one written by someone who was never alive, but I don't remember his name.

hmm. so If i infect myself with HIV, i'll can't catch HIV from these hoes right?

Nothing serves a purpose and existence justifies itself.

Organisms and viruses exist because they are able to sustainably exploit their given environment to reproduce. If they cannot do this they cease to exist.

Semantics. It's like saying we don't chose to eat, the distinction is irrelevant.

Not really. The interactions between your stomach, brain, and any conscious decision you make to eat (including what you eat and how much) are vastly more complex than a chemical signal preventing a virus from interacting with an already infected cell.

For that matter, people DO chose to eat, because people can chose NOT to eat. Fasting is a thing, as is food selection (i.e. deciding to eat a turkey dinner instead of just donuts or cereal, or deciding to eat something that's actually food instead of, say, grass or play-doh). That all reflects a chain of heuristics your brain, being the little meat-computer that it is, goes through. All along the way its looking at information from your stomach, your eyes, nose, sense of touch, even drawing reference from your memory to help make that decision.

A virus essentially just bumps into a cell, and if it doesn't detect the 'fuck off we're full' signal from another virus it injects the cell. If it does, it won't. That has all the complexity of an if-then statement in Java.

*if it doesn't, it won't, I meant to say.

Panspermia.
Those fuckin engineers did it.
Paranoia intensifies.

is a human a life form? it doesn't seem to be one organism, it's made up of trillions of cells, so what drives it to shitpost?

Jews.

What so edgy about this? Just pointing out that distinctions between self organizing structures seem arbitrary. Most things in the universe are self organizing and some can produce more of themselves.

Yes.

Evolution, or the same underlying selective processes that drive it affect everything. This is gonna sound really pretentious but "things that are more able to exist tend to continue to exist more than things that aren't" and viruses are able to exist pretty well, so they continue to.