Guys and girls, in your opinion what are viruses? Are they even a form of life? They do not obey the basic rules of living organisms. They are not born. They just reproduce themselves by reassembling the molecules which they are consist of. They do not have a cellular structure which is the basic unit of life. They do not have their own metabolism, means they can only depend on a host cell to reproduce. They need no food, oxygen or water to survive, neither did they need to excrete. They can just exist as mere crystals outside a host cell without dying.

Are they possibly aliens?

This post has been edited by Celebrity: Aug 5 2009, 11:30 PM

Why we can't consider it is another life-form?

Why must basic of rules of living organism must be born? cannot just based on replicate? Bacteria also replicating, but it is considered a life form.

It is just we define cellular structure is the basic of unit of life. We only understand little on nature works and universe actually.

Yup, it could be alien coming from outer space. That's why I always posted alien is not necessary must a big head, a pair of eye, 2 legs and arms (in alient/UFO) thread.

It could be in virus form as well. Why not?

Sometimes i've been thinking what is ALIEN. Aren't we too to them?

Just like who's the terrorist in this world. oxymoron?

I know there is another kind of virus...Tat is human...If an animal in an area finished off some kind of resources, they tend to adapt the change and seek other resources...But we human are different, WE tend to finished everything in specific area and then spread to another new area and sux everything off....Spreading their seed as well to other part of world....THat is whhat virus would do as welll

About reproduction of viruses, replication isn't just unique to them. All unicellular organisms do that.

Just like yin and yang, prokaryotes and eukaryotes, single-celled oragnisms and multi-cellular organisms, I think viruses, being a non-cellular lifeform, they just stand at the other end of the scale as part of the balance to diversity.

yes ... there's theories that humans originate from viruses ... dunno whether the theory applies to other life forms

Bacterias as with all other currently accepted lifeform uses cell division to replicate.
Viruses do not "replicate" the same way. They take over host cell machinery, and cause it to start assembling multiple copies of viruses. This make is comparable to prions which is an even simpler structure and contains no RNA or DNA whatsoever.


That's what Agent Smith said in The Matrix.

To answer the question of whether virus is life or not, the first question we have to answer is 'what is life?'

How can you tell if something is alive or not?

Some say the most fundamental proof of life is active transport (that requires energy). Others say that life is when an entity is self aware. Still others say that the definition of life is the ability to move a genetic blueprint into future generations, thereby regenerating your likeness.

So the question on whether the virus is alive depends on how you define life.

I dont think is originate from viruses, but bacteria....

For all eukaryotic cells, the ribosome is 80S while in organelle mitochondria and chloroplast, they have 70S ribosomes. And mitochondria and chloroplast is actually quite well built organelle(The structure inside is quite complete such as got DNA). It shows that our mitochondria and chloroplast is actually evolve from bacteria.

In my opinion, all thing starts from singularity(universe also!). I believe that archae bacteria is the ancestor for all living thing. In ice age, only archae bacteria can survive because they can live in extreme/harsh condition. Then it is later evolve to bacteria, follow by protoctista (Algae have the some characteristic of bacteria ) And again, follow by Fungi and Plantae (Whichever come first not clear) Lastly, mammalia.

About virus, I think is obligate intercellular living thing.

I think they are still some sort of life form,as they know how to reproduce themselves or behave more or less like a lifeform.

Virus are pretty interesting organism to me.IMO.

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Added on August 6, 2009, 5:24 pmFrom what i know,mitochondria are bacteria that have been adapted to our bodies.

Just like the bacterias in our intestines.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: Aug 6 2009, 05:24 PM

That what i am saying...... By the way, not adapted to our body, but it is integrated into our cells since it is an organelle

Mitochondria is another great mystery. It has it's own ribosome, performs cell division with the cell's nucleus, and could have been an independent organism that's merged into our cells somewhere along the evolution line and co-evolved together until today.

virus, human, bacteria, animal, life form, aliens.

all those are just part of the universe. when u see or discover something new. then it is call aliens... imagine when dinosaur met with other types of living form like mammals or humans?

they are alien to each other too.. hehee

FYI Malaysians visiting US are called Non-Resident Aliens.

H5N1, H1N1, HIV, nipah virus, many of them were unknown 50 years ago. How do these viruses spring out of the woodwork and turn infectious all of a sudden? If they mutated from some benign form, what's causing them to suddenly mutate, and why now?

erm.........HIV is quite stable...........just that the cure is still elusive...........and the virus hit hard on the immune system causing immunodeficiency
influenza(H1N1...........H10N7....) can be unstable........especially influenza type A due to antigenic shift and antigenic drift.........

and why that happens...........because the components of the virus(including antigenic structure) fuse together in the host cell randomly......there's also a possibility of integrating parts of the host cell as one of the structure of the virus

as for why now..........it happens all the time actually.......human's traveling around the earth also gives the virus a hand in spreading the infection hence the higher chance of exposure to the virus and the media which reports more often of the occurrences

they are healther virus and harmfull virus in human body

There are many reason for it.

1. Virus is mutating all the time, just happen now, it become deadly due to its "new". Once the virus getting old, vaccine is produced, immunity is built, eventually we don't see them much afterwards.
2. Human population become denser, air travel a lot, which become good source of medium of spread.
3. Human live in some area that previously not habitat before, aka invasion of natural segregation of species or in other word, invasion of wildlife habitat.
4. In the old day, there may are other kind of virus, due to studies are not intensive and not well understand about virus. People died due to some disease but doctors don't know why, so it is not logged or history it. So when we refer back, there is no record of those event.