Sooo -- are viruses alive?

[RestlessSoul]

Everything in the Universe is alive - because it’s all one.

Does a virus have a consciousness? Almost certainly not. Does a tree?

 

[stvdv]

Some say yes, some say no. This is a precursor to other questions. But what do you think, based on your "scientific" knowledge? Are viruses alive?

IMO:

Intriguing question

From Hindu POV everything is (in) consciousness, so has this opportunity to evolve. Stones have less freedom to expand, and changes go slow, trees and plants have more freedom, animals still more and humans even more.

From Spiritual POV you can be dead spiritual, even while alive physical

So, 'alive' depends on what is meant with it

Stones are alive, as all are part of evolution. So, viruses are alive

 

[ChristineM]

Now I'm not, and never was, a scientist in the technical sense. However, I remember learning about atoms and that there is space in them and between them, let's say, in a piece of furniture. So as a young student I figured an object like a piece of furniture, was a bunch of atoms with lots of space (so-called) between them.

An interesting snippet, if all the space between all the atoms of every human being on earth were removed leaving only neutrons, protons and electrons the resulting superdense mass would be about the size of a sugar cube.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Here's the thing with me. I hope you have not given me information you cannot personally explain. And now I'm beginning to understand more about the questioning in the book, "Darwin's Black Box." If I remember the title.

I'm a layman when it comes to this stuff. Not an expert myself so I go by what the experts put forth.

If course I could as well as others can always go to a university though and aquire a degree in virology.

I do find the subject facinating nonetheless as with all the sciences.


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[Twilight Hue]

Now I'm not, and never was, a scientist in the technical sense. However, I remember learning about atoms and that there is space in them and between them, let's say, in a piece of furniture. So as a young student I figured an object like a piece of furniture, was a bunch of atoms with lots of space (so-called) between them.

Sometimes I wonder if it truly is empty space.

I think something can be so small it cannot be detected by modern means because the limits if detection are determined by the atomic makeup of our own instruments. I think we were lucky to even have discovered quarks and gluons.

So far we can barely see an atom as it stands right now much less further down the rabbit hole.

 

[exchemist]

Some say yes, some say no. This is a precursor to other questions. But what do you think, based on your "scientific" knowledge? Are viruses alive?

I think most people would say viruses on their own do not meet enough of the criteria for being alive to qualify. But as they can, with a suitable host, reproduce - and therefore evolve - this just goes to show that contrary to popular usage, the distinction between life and non-life is not always clear-cut.

A lot of things turn out to be like this, when one digs into it. For example the traditional distinction between animal, vegetable and mineral fails when one tries to fit fungi into the classification. The distinction between a wave and a particle can no longer be made at the atomic scale. I've just painted my bedroom and in different lights the walls can seem blue, green or grey. Etc.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Sometimes I wonder if it truly is empty space.

I think something can be so small it cannot be detected by modern means because the limits if detection are determined by the atomic makeup of our own instruments. I think we were lucky to even have discovered quarks and gluons.

So far we can barely see an atom as it stands right now much less further down the rabbit hole.

I think that's partly what the Higgs field, and the Higg's boson particle, attempt to explain, isn't it? There is no space between sub atomic particles, and no vacuum. There is a field, and the field has a non zero energy value. So everything has mass, even nothing. Or something.

 

[Brian2]

Everything in the Universe is alive - because it’s all one.

Does a virus have a consciousness? Almost certainly not. Does a tree?

OR everything in the Universe is dead - because it's all one.
Does a man have a consciousness? We think we do.

 

[RestlessSoul]

OR everything in the Universe is dead - because it's all one.
Does a man have a consciousness? We think we do.

Cogito, ergo sum.

But am I?

 

[oldbadger]

No. Law of monophyly. The same reason that people are still apes.

I'm a badger!
An old one.

 

[shunyadragon]

Some say yes, some say no. This is a precursor to other questions. But what do you think, based on your "scientific" knowledge? Are viruses alive?

This is not as controversial as some propose. As far as science goes viruses are viruses. I consider viruses a primitive form of life that reproduces, but must rely on a host organism to reproduce. Many scientist do not consider viruses true life, but an intermediate between non-life and life in the evolution of life.

Are viruses alive?

"In many ways whether viruses are living or non-living entities is a moot philosophical point. There can be few organisms other than humans that have caused such devastation of human, animal and plant life. Smallpox, polio, rinderpest and foot-and-mouth viruses are all well-known for their disastrous effect on humans and animals. Less well known is the huge number of plant viruses that can cause total failure of staple crops.

In teaching about simple viruses, I use the flippant definition of a virus as ‘gift-wrapped nucleic acid’, whether that is DNA or RNA and whether it is double- or single-stranded. The gift-wrapping is virtually always a virus-encoded protein capsid and may or may not also include a lipid coat from the host. The viral nucleic acid is replicated and the viral proteins synthesised using the host cell’s processes. In many cases the virus also encodes some of the enzymes required for its replication, a well-known example being reverse transcriptase in RNA viruses.

Over the last 15 years or so, giant viruses found in amoebae have complicated our picture of viruses as simple non-living structures. Mimiviruses and megaviruses can contain more genes than a simple bacterium and may encode genes for information storage and processing. Genes common to the domains Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya can be found in different giant viruses, and some researchers argue on this basis that they constitute a fourth domain of life.

However, a crucial point is that viruses are not capable of independent replication. They have to replicate within a host cell and they use or usurp the host cell machinery for this. They do not contain the full range of required metabolic processes and are dependent on their host to provide many of the requirements for their replication. To my mind there is a crucial difference between viruses and other obligate intracellular parasites, such as bacteria; namely, viruses have to utilize the host metabolic and replication machinery. Intracellular bacteria may merely use the host as the environment in which they can supplement their limited metabolic capacity and they usually have their own replication machinery. Organisms such as Chlamydia spp. have not yet been grown outside cell culture but they carry their own transcriptional and translational machinery and fall into the evolutionary kingdom of Bacteria. Like many other ‘difficult’ pathogenic bacteria, we may eventually be able to grow them in cell-free systems."

 

[Polymath257]

OK, I kind of answered Twilight Hue about this, although it does get kind of technical in figuring out what's what, alive or not alive. So I will pose a similar question:
Do variants of a virus such as the covid-19 ever, according to scientific knowledge, become anything other than a virus?? Not sure if science has deternined an answer.

Not that we have seen. Like I said, viruses do not have metabolisms and depend on other living things to reproduce. This limits what they can evolve into.

That said, viruses are remarkably diverse given their niche. They are often classified by whether they have DNA or RNA, and whether that DNA or RNA is single stranded or double stranded. Some viruses are encapsulated, meaning they have something similar to a cell membrane surrounding them.

For example, coronaviruses, like the one causing the current pandemic, are single stranded RNA viruses. But the virus that causes parvo in dogs is a single stranded DNA virus.

Even within each classification, there is a huge amount of diversity. This is the level on which virus evolution occurs. We would, for example, expect a single stranded RNA retrovirus like that for AIDS to stay in that classification, even if it does something like add a new protein or even develop an encapsulation.

Also, there are viruses that infect species as varied as plants and fungi and animals. There are viruses that only infect bacteria. All work on the basic principle of taking over the hosts system for transcribing genes and using it to make virus proteins instead of whatever the host needs.

On the other side, though, viruses can and do affect the evolution of other organisms. They can transfer genetic material between species, which can change the range of variation in a population. This seems to be rare, but it is a possibility. Also, it is possible to the viruses genetics to become part of the genetics of its host, being transferred from generation to generation in the usual way for that species.

 

[Brian2]

Cogito, ergo sum.

But am I?

You think you are. But if the consciousness is no more than an emergent product of dead matter, then are you?

 

[Polymath257]

Does the article say or explain if or how viruses move to become (evolve) other forms of life? In other words, not viruses? Less or more complicated?

yes, a virus can become more or less complicated through evolution. But it will still remain a virus.

In the same way, once a population is an animal, it will remain animals even if those animals then diversity into reptiles or birds or mammals. Once a population is a mammal, it will remain mammalian even if it then diversifies into cats, dogs, elephants, etc.

Evolution does NOT say that a cat will turn into a dog. It does NOT say that a parrot will tun into a lizard.

What it *does* say is that vertebrates will turn into new types of vertebrates. That birds will turn into new types of birds. That some of those descendants may *look* very different than their ancestors, but will show evidence of their genetic history.

Viruses change into other viruses. They can still become more or less complicated, depending on how natural selection works in their case.

 

[shunyadragon]

You think you are. But if the consciousness is no more than an emergent product of dead matter, then are you?

'No more' is sort of 'subjective' question as to what we are. We are an emergent product of non-living matter, so a are viruses, as a product of abiogenesis and evolution. There are many diverse conflicting religious assumptions as to what humans and consciousness is beyond our physical existence.

I will shuffle the deck and you can pick a card as to what you believe we are, including viruses, beyond the physical nature of our existence.

 

[Left Coast]

I am asking if science ascertains that viruses, living or not according to scientific terms, are known to evolve to other forms of living matter. And now that I'm thinking about it, hmmm...how about non-living matter? Either way. Dust or not dust, non-living matter becoming living matter? Question's out. (Somewhat like what was before evoution? Life? Non-life?) So either viruses evolve into something else, or they stay viruses. Or maybe they're not alive. I mean -- which is it?

More than one person has now explained to you that the answer is "it's complicated." I'm sorry if that doesn't fit into your worldview, but it is what it is.

 

[Polymath257]

If we also go back far enough, we dissolve if normally buried, into gases and move into the soil. So it makes sense that when the Bible says we are dust -- essentially that is reasonable. However -- I don't see proof that dust morphs or evolves by any reasonable equation into other forms of life. Thus dust does not evolve into an ant or a human. Humans stay humans, ants stay ants, and so far I see that viruses remain viruses. Although ants and humans can deteriorate (not evolve) to dust.

None of the atoms in your body is alive. None of the molecules in your body is alive. When you eat, the food that you eat is not alive. But, all of those non-living things, when rearranged in the right way, become alive.

Nonliving matter produces living matter all the time. In fact, ALL living matter is made from non-living matter.

 

[SalixIncendium]

**MOVED TO EVOLUTION VS CREATIONISM**​

 

[Polymath257]

If we also go back far enough, we dissolve if normally buried, into gases and move into the soil.

Huh?

So it makes sense that when the Bible says we are dust -- essentially that is reasonable. However -- I don't see proof that dust morphs or evolves by any reasonable equation into other forms of life. Thus dust does not evolve into an ant or a human. Humans stay humans, ants stay ants, and so far I see that viruses remain viruses. Although ants and humans can deteriorate (not evolve) to dust.

It seems you have a poor understanding about what evolution is about and what the theory of evolution actually says.

 

[Polymath257]

Sometimes I wonder if it truly is empty space.

I think something can be so small it cannot be detected by modern means because the limits if detection are determined by the atomic makeup of our own instruments. I think we were lucky to even have discovered quarks and gluons.

So far we can barely see an atom as it stands right now much less further down the rabbit hole.

The difficulty is the uncertainty principle. Something that is physically small (so having a small uncertainty in position) automatically means its momentum is very uncertain. If it is to be confined (small), that means its mass must be very large.

This is why protons, which are much more massive than electrons, can be confined to the nucleus of an atom, while the electrons fill up the much larger atom.

So the question becomes whether there are very massive particles we have not yet discovered. And that is precisely why we have particle accelerators: to find such massive particles and see how they interact with the less massive ones we know.

It isn't so much a problem of the 'atomic makeup of our instruments' but that to produce massive particles requires a LOT of energy. At this point, we direct that energy by using collisions between things we know about (electrons, protons) and seeing what is produced. The obvious difficulty is that there tends to be a LOT of debris and sifting out the signal for those massive particles isn't all that easy.

But we are working on it.