Dear Nick,
I quite agree with you that the virus is incapable of replication
unless it somehow manages to modify host activities. I am certainly not
going to make the claim that viruses are living...simply that they are
biological entities. Thanks for the reply.
Joe
On 19 Feb 1997, Nicholas Landau wrote:
>kr1 at PGSTUMAIL.PG.CC.MD.US (Karl Roberts) writes:
>> >Viruses can, without too much discussion, be considered acellular
> >biological entities. Since the concept of what constitutes life is still
> >basically unresolved and subject to personal interpretation, it is
> >probably best to think of viruses in this fashion. Obligate intracellular
> >parasites can include viruses, chlamydiae, mycoplasmas, and possibly even
> >prions and viroids, if you wish...viruses even have their own system of
> >classification, separate from other entities. You decide, and let us know.
> >Joe
>> Gotta disagree. The virus itself is incapable of any biological
> function. This is not simply a matter of growth conditions, as is
> the case of the cellular obligate intracellular parasites, some of
> which can be raised in the lab under highly specific conditions, without
> the presence of a host.
>> Even once viral nucleic acids have entered a host cell, the virus
> itself does not conduct biological activity. It simply modifies
> the biological activities of the host.
>> Geneticists love to refer to virus, transposons and viroids as organisms,
> because they have genomes. For a geneticist, this is all that matters.
> As a microbiologist, I see life as more complex than simply the presence
> of a certain molecule, such as DNA.
>> Of course, nothing stated here is unknown to the proponants of counting
> virus as living, and so nothing is resolved.
>> So goes science.
>> Nick Landau
>
