Virus general-/vir/

Well duh, "define living".

If you matter about my personal opinion, no they're not alive. They're sophisticated organic machines, but not living beings.

They are not alive until they blow their load inside you

>>8434444
Non-living according to current scientific standards.

>>8434466
>>8434458
But they contain DNA/RNA and protein.

>>8434473
Right, they are replicating machines.

>>8434478
But I thought that's what life was.

Viruses are Unliving.

Why do you people gotta be so stupid?

I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that they're alive.

So if we found one on Venus we wouldn't consider it alien life?

>>8434490
We'd consider it an indicator of life, since viruses can't propagate without living hosts.

>>8434444
What do they lack in order to meet the standards of life?

>>8434536
Several

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

They're life that is too intelligent to waste time and resources maintaining a metabolism of their own. The NEETs of the microbiology world, along with the mycoplasma.

>>8434552
Thanks, anon! Viruses are incredible

>>8434483
Ah, someone who doesn't understand that answers change with time. I am old enough that I was taught that virii didn't meet the previous definition of 'alive' but were then considered alive. Now, you, a standard internet punk, think it is obvious they are not alive.

why is the accepted definition of life so shitty?

So a lot of what makes the "soft sciences" soft are ill-defined systems of classification. Or rather, classifications which are based on criteria that made sense at the time they were established, and which are useful in the vast majority of cases, but which yield a lot of exceptions or ambiguity in the real world.

This is a good example of that. It seems like it should be a straightforward thing to distinguish living bodies from nonliving objects- arguably the most basic task in biology. And it is, in almost every case... just not when it comes to viruses.

So it's useful to remember what the criteria were for (do trees count as life? Yes. Do rocks? No. Do the lichens on rocks? Yes.) and that this kind of classification is a human construct. It's not arbitrary, but it isn't some perfect, objective representation of fact. Just some rules a bunch of people agreed on.

So:
Do viruses meet the scientific criteria for calling them alive? No, but biologists study them anyway.

Are they alive? Maybe. Does it matter?

>>8434536
Girlfriends

File: meaningoflife.jpg (353KB, 1024x640px) Image search: [Google]

353KB, 1024x640px

>>8434478

>>8434444
Sexy quads

>>8434473
>>8434481
>b-but muh memes
Time to kill yourself

>>8434473
Do you want them to be alive? Fine, whatever, they're alive. Are you happy now? They don't care.

I definitely couldn't answer one way or another, but I like to think of it like this: is a seed living? It needs no homeostasis, no food or resources, and finds an area to infect incidentally. But when it does infect some host area (dirt), it uses and abuses its resources to build upon its own complexity. All of the organic mass of the resulting plant is taken from the sun and the Earth. Eventually reproducing itself exactly to be dispersed back into the world to repeat the process. Where did life start? Is the seed living, or did it merely contain some instructions for the chemical rearrangement of the resources around it into a new structure, that it can use to proliferate itself?

>>8434897
This

>>8434617
not

not too bad a post

>>8434444

Not alive, nor acording to what a cell is supossed to be under the celular theory, not acording to the theory of living systems and not even acording to their own behaviour that can be even of a rock that happens to have some DNA inside.

So... no, not at all.

>>8434614
>bunch of rules people agreed on

Sounds like this would accurately describe all the sciences. Just more variables that cannot be realistically isolated in the soft sciences.

>>8434536

Give viruses a metabolism and you have something that is clearly alive.

In fact, a lifeform that lacks a lipidic membrane to control the flow of energy and matter could be interesting to see if it ends reverting into a lipidic membrane or actually finds a way to use only proteins for the same functions.

>>8434614
>And it is, in almost every case... just not when it comes to viruses
Its easy for viruses too. They are not alive and no one trained in biology thinks that they are

>>8434925
>Give viruses a metabolism and you have something that is clearly alive.
Really they would also need to be able to reproduce on their own, although thats more of a grey area.

If they metabolised I would probably consider them life

>>8434444
A living organism is defined as one which does the following:
Consume resources
Generate waste
Reproduce

A virus does not consume resources and is therefore not alive

>>8434953
Shitty healthcare begs to differ ;_;