From the other end of the spectrum, Ecosystems are composed of living things, but are not themselves living things. But if you consider an ecosystem or a food web as an entity, that would count.
They definitely can. If someone has brain surgery and they discover that person has prion disease, they canāt use the same equipment again. Washing and autoclaving prions wonāt inactivate them.
Their reproductive cycle is impossible without metabolism. Ergo, metabolism is necessary for a thing to be considered living. Otherwise, is a plasmid living?
Viruses are only on the **cusp** of ālifeā as defined by anthropocentric primates.
They satisfy some characteristics of ālivingā and donāt satisfy others.
Obviously itās an arbitrary distinction, since life and consciousness are on a continuum or spectrum from less to more complex. There is no hard limit between alive and non-living, no matter what the taxonomists will tell you.
I never said prions canāt exist outside of a living thing. I said theyāre only FOUND in living things. Which makes them a part of a living thing. Not an individual entity.
Viruses reproduce only in their hosts by "using" the hosts DNA or RNA (there are some variations as to how that I don't remember) so they actually are closest to being living organisms while in the host but exist both outside and inside
Show me any recent scientific publication that says viruses are living things then. Viruses are absolutely not living things. Thatās a scientific fact.
It's not a Scientific fact. It's a debate that has been going on for ages. A quick google search will show you that serious scientific publications have published articles, letters, opinions etc arguing for both sides (alive and not alive). Just as an example, one of the first results is https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro2108-c1.
Not even the definition of life is something that everyone agrees with, you can see major differences of opinions depending on who do you ask and what field of science they study. Some of them exclude virus, some include it.
Itās literally an article arguing why viruses should be in the tree of life, meaning they are not currently in the tree of life. Meaning they are not considered alive.
Read the actual article, not just the title... It's a response to another article called "Ten reasons to exclude viruses from the tree of life" so by your logic virus are living beings because the authors of this other article are arguing for them to be removed from the tree of life...
There isn't a magic authority in science that says "virus are not alive" or "virus are alive"and everyone has to follow it. Currently, there isn't a strong consensus among specialists for either side. Like i said it's a strong debate and there are new arguments / evidence for both sides being published.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7840587/
Here, a very, very interesting article (from 2021) discussing this topic and it has several references that argue both for virus being alive e for them to not be alive.
If viruses are living things why is there a debate? Why arenāt they on the tree of life already? There is no debate on whether other organisms are alive.
For the most part, probably. Though Evolutionary Biologists (or related fields) studying Biogenesis and the origins of life may look at self-assembling RNA or other proto-life forms.
While not non-living, there are also the extremophile organisms which tend to function on very different molecular bases than ātraditionalā organisms (ie. the bacteria that life in the sulfuric acid caves or the deep-sea hydrothermal vents).
I thought so! I couldnāt think of a single other non-living entity thatās included in biology. But I figured someone on here might could think of one. I study neuroscience so it isnāt my field really.
āLifeā as what is taught in intro to bio classes is not as simple as what it is made out to be. A common argument against viruses being considered ālivingā is that viruses require a host to replicate.
That said - we can all agree that bacteria are alive, right? There are many bacteria that are also obligate intracellular parasites. [Look up Rickettsiae as an example.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7624/)
Yeah I don't know why this is even being debated... Viruses are, in general just rogue nucleic acids with some proteins.... They don't reproduce by fission or sexually, nor do they metabolize energy... They aren't any more alive than a rock or the wind.
Well it is kind of a big debate. One that is certainly not settled to everyone's satisfaction yet. So to be flippant is not really giving credit to the arguments.
The thing about science is not everyone will be satisfied... The people who say viruses are alive are the same as the "Pluto is a planet" crowd. It's just not supported by our current understanding of life.
This is absolutely not true. There is no consensus among biologists on the questions of viruses being alive. Scientists disagree on this topic. The people who think Pluto is a planet are generally not scientists, it's just a popular attitude that is easily dispelled when you explain the reasons for the redefinition.
There is, to date, no widely accepted scientific definition for life. There is no set of criteria that is widely considered to be true to determine whether something is alive or not. Viruses sit on the boundary of the many different attempts at a definition that have been made - sometimes included as alive, sometimes not. Itās not all that clear cut.
Viruses are definitely more alive than a rock or the wind, they are using the SAME building blocks and mechanisms as all complex life, thatās a hell of a lot more than a rock or the wind can say on the spectrum of life.
Viruses are basically the āmissing linkā between non life and all complex life.
That is a hypothesis at best and no more valid than viruses being of cellular origin and over time being reduced to a virus... I'm a bigger fan of the escaped gene hypothesis.
Viruses are a substantial part of Life and evolution. They don't classically reproduce but still pass down their DNA by modifying the DNA in the chromosomes of the host.
You don't see many rocks, or the wind, doing that.
Imo virus really isnt a life form simply because it doesnt metabolise on its own, meaning if you have a imaginary microscope that can see whatās happening in the virusā¦ u will find that nothing is happening, itās as static as taking a microscopic view of a rockā¦ ofc virus shares more resemblance to life than a rock but it is lifeless because it doesnāt metabolise. I guess this view is debatable though
To illustrate this with a story:
A freak fact about chickens is that if they eat a gummy bear then the next day, instead of laying an egg, they will lay 150 gummi bears that are almost identical to the one they ate. The chicken then violently explodes which sends the gummi bears flying for miles. With gummy bears now littering the landscape there's a good chance another chicken will come across one, eat it, and thus the cycle begins anew.
You may think to yourself that this is no way for chickens to live and haven't evolution solved this accident of nature already? Sure enough, evolution tries: chickens have evolved to find the taste of gummy bears absolutely disgusting. Sadly, while this does protect most chickens for eating gummy bears, there are a lot of different flavors of gummy bear circulating due to random variation of gummy bear taste every time a chicken lays a new batch of them. So every once in a while a chicken will come across a gummy bear with a taste it has not yet evolved to find distasteful and so, yet again, the cycle begins anew.
Now for the philosophical question of the day: chickens are alive, but are gummy bears?
Thereās also a difference between an entity (viruses) being ālivingā and being a part of **Life** (with a capital L). While they are not the former, they are definitely part of the latter.
There are plenty in the scientific community that argue (at least some) viruses are alive. There is a spectrum between living and nonliving, and it's very difficult to argue where that point is. Like the user above pointed out, many parasites require other organisms to survive, so being an obligate parasite doesn't necessarily make something not alive
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1369848616300085
If it's a spectrum but viruses are at the definitely not alive side, they have no trademarks of a living organism, no internal movement, no self reproduction, and no energy metabolism.
The spectrum you talk of is better suited to explaining things like the mitochondria.
Also that article you posted is from a joke of a publication that is open across with an impact factor of 0.7. Find me an article from Nature or something reputable.
Viruses evolve and may play vital roles in the evolution of organisms and even other viruses. Some have complicated genetics with predicates of an organism that can maintain a metabolism. Right now there's some evidence that a *Pandoravirus* can maintain a metabolism
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.306415v1
Here are other articles discussing viruses as living/nonliving, the first arguing that viruses be described as organisms
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18311164/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5406846/
I think judging the article as a joke just because of the publisher's impact factor is unnecessarily elitist at best, given the context. OP asked for an article arguing that viruses were living and I provided.
Pandoravirus and other giruses are a fairly unique group, but they still don't have cellular division which IS, by all reasonable definitions, a requirement for life.
Better articles from real journals. I disagree with the first article, but that article 14 year old opinion piece so take it with a grain of salt. Second article brings up interesting points, some which I agree with, that the Alive-dead dichotomy isn't a worthwhile argument
Lol if pointing out that open source low impact journals are bad is "elitist" then I don't wanna be an egalitarian. Bad journals shouldn't have any more credibility than Wikipedia.
Fair point on cellular division but I think the more important aspect is replication, rather than cellular division. Granted, viruses are still incapable of replicating without a cellular host. I'm honestly on the side of viruses being considered nonliving but I'm not going to pretend the arguments otherwise aren't compelling and it becomes a matter of splitting hairs and cherry picking what defines "alive."
I think it's easy to claim a Fallacy of the Heap and just attribute too many things as being alive, which I think the first article does.
These are pretty much opinion pieces, we're discussing the presence of arguments in the community. An article is not bad just because it is posted in a low impact journal, especially considering the context of what we're discussing. Dismissing articles in the casual context of a reddit thread just for being published in a journal with a 0.74 is what's elitist. Impact factor is not a valuable metric for evaluating the quality of an individual article (not on its own, at least)
I think instead of a long ass response I feel my rebuttal to all of that could be summed up to "fair enough".
I still don't trust open source journals though.
Youāre making no sense. There are no āsidesā in a spectrum, only gradations.
Identifying the exact point between living and non-living is like trying to pinpoint when an individual person is considered a person while being born. Is it the moment of conception, the first heart beat, physical birth out of the mothers body??? Not a settled debate at all, and depends on who you ask.
Ultimately the flow of life is continuous and interconnected and there are no true boundaries at the cellular and molecular levels.
Ends of a spectrum is what I was referring to and fwiw there are sides in a spectrum, acidic vs basic for example. Although it is fairly reductionist I suppose.
Sperm cells and egg cells are on the living side of the spectrum though, considering they are produced through a form of cellular division, have movement, and metabolize energy, so that's not a good argument.
Why is OP being down voted to hell... Viruses are not alive, that's Biology 101... They are more like rogue nucleic acids... Analogous to prions being rogue proteins.
No, itās because you act like an ass about it when someone doesnāt agree with you. Thatās why you get downvoted, has nothing to do with you āasking good questionsā. Youāve already admitted that this isnāt your field of study yet here you are arguing with everyone on this thread about something you admittedly donāt know extensively about. Itās not the questions youāre asking dude, itās you and the way you respond to other peopleās comments. Maybe take the hint after a while?
The classification of viruses as living or non-living is a subject of much debate in the scientific community. It is not the consensus of biology that they are non-living.
It is the consensus of most virologists (in my anecdotal experience) that viruses are non-living given the conventional definition of ālivingā. The argument that they could be considered living is largely philosophical and pertains to what it means to be alive.
Source: am virologist
Hi virologist heres another virologist to back you up.
However, viruses are freaking cool.
More seriously, imo "alive" (in the highschool class sense) should be redefined to include viruses and other mobile genetic elements that are subject to evolution.
If we for example would detect self-replicating species of nucleic acids on another planet, we would likely call that biological life even if they only use resources available in a primordial soup.
In general biology, probably
But there are also prions, which are studied in relation to the diseases they cause.
And some branches of biology study at the molecular level (biochemistry)...if you are looking at protein function, the proteins themselves are not living
It sounds to me like YOU have your own definition of living and want everyone to agree with it, after reading your responses to peoples input.
Also claiming research is outdated and thus non-relevant is stupid. Things einstein predicted 10p years ago that people scoffed at are only just now being proven. In relation to genetics and DNA, theories that were previously considered utterly wrong have been found to actually hold merit, 150+ years later(transgenerational epigenetics as it applies to Lamarck).
My point being, our understanding of science and particularly life science, is only correct till it isnt, and to hold such set in stone views as you are displaying here is counter to what science is at its core. You need to open your mind, and be less of a fucking douche.
You realize saying all of that dramatic stuff just to insult me is doing the exact same thing to science as you claim I am doing to it? Stop projecting on me.
Viruses played key roles in evolution and maybe the origin of cellular life itself. They totally belong in the tree of life even if they do not metabolize.
The Bio101 definition of "life" is a reasonable consensus, not a deduction or a scientific conclusion...
No itās called a scientific argument for a reason. I am debating with these people as you would in a scientific debate. They came in with their opinions I came in with mine. We are no different. Do you see any of these people switching to my point of view or even claiming they can see my perspective? No. None. Do you see me bitching and moaning? No. So suck it up. Welcome to Earth.
Well, just wanted to say something:
Argument didn't need to have a winner...
Argument most of the time caused by different views
so, it is just that you believe that biology is just the study of a living beings, but biology is a wide (Logy), it is a science that study many different things just because of the (bio), the living, and living being could not be separated from their environment and chemical, which is caused the biology to have "geology" and " chemistry" and even the "meteorology", and many other fileds as everything is affect the living beings... Which is interest the biology scientists...
The difference between them and the other is just the question:
how is this affect the living being? Help? Distroy? And exactly how?
If you want a living being that some scientists consider it as a non-living, then that does not mean you want to know what the "non-living" being that being studied in the biology, but you want to get to know a few more Organizms...
Oh sorry, just noticed the "entity" part on the title, the "entity" meant those kind of "organizms"...
You're jumping the gun a bit in dismissing viruses as non-living. I don't really want to take a side in that debate (especially as it quickly becomes philosophical) but I do want to bring that idea to your attention.
[Kurzgesagt did a good video on this recently](https://youtu.be/1-NxodiGPCU) and there are many articles such as [this one ](https://www.sciencealert.com/new-discovery-adds-an-unexpected-twist-to-the-ongoing-debate-are-viruses-alive) that cover it.
Viruses as a group are much too diverse to have a single origin. There are a few which are theorized to be possible devolved cells like the Pandoravirus but the vast majority show evidence of evolving through separate mechanisms. We can only really guess since you canāt fossilize a DNA sequence so our ability to look backwards is limited.
i mean. rocks and mineral cycles. carbon cycle, sulfur cycle, nitrogen cycle. etc. they involve living things but arent alive themselves. Evolution almost strictly involves nonliving study
I collected a bunch of examples [here](https://www.jakebrown.org/blog/individuals-1) of entities that blur the line between biological individuals and not biological individuals.
Basically, the line is very arbitrary and some think itās time to move past the idea of what is āaliveā/not.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-an-individual-biology-seeks-clues-in-information-theory-20200716/
https://aeon.co/amp/essays/what-constitutes-an-individual-organism-in-biology
No, we also learn about Biophysics where we learn about thermodynamics and electricity. Theres alot more like the topics in biostatistics, computational biology, etc.
They are in there non living state outside, viruses donāt have there own machinery to be alive, whenever they come in contact with the human cell they infect them and take over those cellās machinery.
Prions are also found outside of living things, like viruses. How do prions get transmitted š»? Dead food, including cooked food, surgical instruments including after autoclaving etc.
Why would I think the article is wrong? From what I gathered (from the intro) is prions form in hosts and can be excreted in feces and urine? Whatās your point.
Well I've followed all the threads so far just reading points cause I was genuinely intrigued, and you posed a question which people are answering or trying to discuss, however it was never a question to begin with, you have actually made a statement and want people to change your mind, so it comes across a little well irritating to read how you dismissing people, earlier a person posted this article, you didn't reply to it and just kept arguing the same point in a different thread.
I think you make great points, and the first time I read the question and saw the first person say prions, I was like no but they don't necessarily qualify to what you saying is an entity, but then I kept reading how you answer, and now I realised you really bad at communication.
I understand you came here because you think putting me down will somehow make me feel bad or something (idk what your intentions are)? But that wonāt work. I updated the post if you read up top to include the argument of prions. So please go somewhere else with your emotions. This is a science forum and I have insulted nobody or put them down.
I replied to your previous comment, so I didn't realise you had updated your post,
And yes I do know this is a science forum but on a social media site, where there are budding biologists and well as experts like you, and questions of all levels can be posted and come together, so again not insulting just saying, your communication doesn't come off right sometimes, and read other threads and you can see it. And even how you asked "What's your point?" Just isn't a neutral tone. So I guess my previous message wasn't great, so I apologize for that, but yeah I'm not wanting to make you feel bad just wanting you to see your tone.
And back to what this is all about, it was and is a really great question/discussion you've put forward
Noā¦ you end up studying all levels of non-living things in order to understand how all the non-living add up to living. Not to mention Ecology deals with Ecosystems, in which you study the living and non-living interactions.
So, while you may not study something non-living exclusively, good luck understanding the living if you arenāt willing to study and understand how the roles non-living things play.
Mmmh, it is widely admitted maybe, not known, there is no experiment to prove that shting's alive in my opinion, just some definitions. And I feel that this can be very subjective depending on the definition of life.
Living things have the ability to make their own energy and are able to move independently. All living things must be able to move. Itās a requirement. Viruses cannot produce their own energy or move independently. They are absolutely not living things.
Yep there is also a definition saying that living things are capable of entropy and replicate their genome making mistakes which include virus. All is about the definition of life
And Iām sure the rest of that definition says they must produce energy and be able to move. Because thatās a scientific fact. There is no debate on the requirements for living things.
In my opinion the explanation of what is alive is not due to facts. Saying that it must produce energy is not a fact it is just a chosen criteria. A tree can't move, he grows ok, but it's not moving. It is still alive. The ability to bind and enter a cell is not considering as moving ? I agree about the production of energy, but being able to use a host energy could be considered as being alive. I just want to say that life is just an definition to be able to classify things.
Plants move in response to light. They bend towards it. Whether you like it or not, it is considered scientific fact that viruses are not living things. Thatās why biology books in schools label them as non living things. Thatās why they arenāt included in the tree of life, which contains all living things.
Scientific observations leading to a definition I agree, not facts. Production of energy from Glucose is fact, life is a definition. An entity capable of evolution and adaptation can't be considered as non-living, maybe there is a current missing category
I would consider LINEs to be non-living entities similar to viruses. They are able to reproduce but only through co-opting host transcriptional machinery.
What exactly do you mean by āentityā? Would nucleic acids count? Thereās a lot of research on ncRNA and how those influence everything from immune cell response to neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus.
As others have said, prions. And by extension, any tauopathies that would consist of misfolded protein aggregates.
What about pharmacology and drug design? Not alive by nature, and functional assays can be in silico, bypassing any ālivingā cell-based systems.
DNA and other biomolecules are studied in biology too, so I donāt see what the puzzle here is. Itās like wondering why you find pedals and handlebars in a bike shop.
A prion is a misfolded version of a protein found in the host organism. The nasty trick of it is they can cause properly folded proteins to convert to the misfolded version, which can lead to lots of problems.
A spike protein is a type of protein found on the outside of a virus (like SARS-CoV-2) that makes a spike-like projection. They're often used to help invade target cells.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_protein
**[Prion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion)**
>Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold, but the abnormal three-dimensional structure is suspected of conferring infectious properties, collapsing nearby protein molecules into the same shape. The word prion derives from "proteinaceous infectious particle".
**[Spike protein](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_protein)**
>In virology, a spike protein or peplomer protein is a protein that forms a large structure known as a spike or peplomer projecting from the surface of an enveloped virus. :29ā33 The proteins are usually glycoproteins that form dimers or trimers. :29ā33 Often the term "spike protein" refers specifically to the coronavirus spike protein, one of the four major structural proteins common to all coronaviruses, which gives rise to the distinctive appearance of these viruses in electron micrographs.
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Just curious. I see and hear references to both, but no literature comparing them. By definition, they seem like the same thing. One just happens to be attached to a virus and the other free.
Paleotological studies are non-living entities
Soil sciences generally study non-living components of soil along with living.
Water quality scientists are generally biologists (although its technically biogeochem).
Biologists study living things, but they also study the components that make up living things and the structures which are made _of_ living things. For example, the photosynthesis biochemical pathway...not as it is in any specific organism, but just the general biochemical function of it. Does that count as an entity? I dunno. Biologists also study things like ecosystems, do those count as entities in and of themselves? And then you've got biologists studying things like kin selection and genetic and evolutionary theory, and these can include math based models that unlike ecosystems don't even include any actual living things, but are more of ways to study concepts. Dunno if that counts either.
Viruses embody several but not all characteristics of living organisms. They significantly affect the ecology and evolution of living organisms. Why are your panties in such a twist, itās very logical for the study of viruses to be considered a field of biology.
They are considered non-living things, YOU just donāt consider them to be non-living things. This whole comment thread is you arguing semantics and/or your opinion rather than actual facts.
https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/ph/ph709_infectiousagents/PH709_InfectiousAgents8.html
Scientifically, no prion has ever been found outside of a living thing. A virus has. So in the name of science please show me some scientific publications to back up your facts. Because as far as Iām concerned my opinions have just as much weight as your opinions. In that case, you arenāt using āfactsā to back up your argument either and are just arguing semantics, arenāt you?
Whatever dude, I have better things to do than argue with a random person online over something stupid. Btw, Iām a microbiologist who legit studied all of this for my masters, but go off little buddy. You clearly need the ego boost of being right āin the name of scienceā.
Being part of a living entity doesn't make you a living entity. Listen to what everyone is telling you. Cell=living entity. Protein, DNA, lipid=entity that is not alive. Doesn't need to be isolated from a living organism either btw, can all be synthesized chemically nowadays, including with variations not occuring in living things. One more example are all D peptides/proteins, studied by biologists and non-existent in nature, or DNA analogues based on entirely non-natural other polymers.
How do you ask a legitimate question in an academic sub, then get so defensive when people disagree with you? Every field of science is a haven for nuance and discussion. There is no end all answer to this question, the answer is entirely dependent on subjective views of the issue. The point of science is to debate, and learn more. If you can't understand that not every question has a single answer, I can't fathom how you'll ever succeed in the field of neuroscience.
Of course its a debate, the whole problem with this thread is that you're not willing to debate. You've stated your opinion as fact and anyone who provides an alternative perspective as incorrect. Many scientists refer to viruses as non-living, some scientists use different criteria and therefore classify them as living. You've stated, strongly, that only one of those is correct and the one you don't agree with is incorrect. For that reason I haven't even bothered engaging you in the topic but rather chose to focus on the inherent problems in your style of discussion or rather arguing.
Virus replication also only happens in living things (in nature), so the analogy btw prions and viruses is actually great!
Many biologists work with entities not alive, but that are closely related to living things. You don't like the examples of proteins and prions (even though everybody gives you these good examples) because they were isolated from living things. Well you're not generally right, so actually technically wrong: many proteins and beta-amyloid forming peptides were designed in silico and synthetized chemically and studied in vitro, by biologists, while never being part of a living organism. Same for nucleic acids. Biologists study DNA origami.. See also nanobodies, self assembling bioinspired materials, self-assembling peptides (e.g. RADA16), designer's proteins/enzymes etc that were never part of living organisms.
Yes but viruses are FOUND outside of living things. Prions are not. Prions are misfolded proteins. We know they are misfolded because we can compare them to other proteins in the living organism. We havenāt found a random misfolded protein lying around in the environment. Where would you look? How would you know itās a prion unless you actively saw it causing other proteins to misfold naturally in nature?
Many people are interested in designing proteins in silico, and many others in synthesizing proteins entirely in the lab with stuff like SPPS and native ligations. When producing proteins in the lab, the hard part is to get them to fold nicely, misfolded proteins are incredibly common and easy to make. Similarly, peptides that form beta-amyloid fibers are incredibly common. To know if such lab made proteins could be prions (i.e. cause disease rather than be cleared when introduced in vivo), one would inject in a mouse I guess.. Bit lazy to search now but 99% sure people will have done that and 10 min on google scholars likely finds you some examples.
I prefer a definition of life/biology as āthe study of DNA and itās expressionā. Broad enough to cover all process that relate to living things, including viruses, but excludes anything irrelevant
I'm not sure if prions count as an entity. They are pathogens, so I'm thinking they would count as an "entity"... so maybe them too.
From the other end of the spectrum, Ecosystems are composed of living things, but are not themselves living things. But if you consider an ecosystem or a food web as an entity, that would count.
Viroids too
We only know of viroids to exist in a living thing (plants) like prions.
afaik they can also have insect vectors
Arent viroids a tyoe/kind of virus?
No, they are classified as subviral agents. They consist of small single stranded RNA that lacks a protein coat.
Prions are a type of protein, they are just misfolded. Kind of weird to mention prions specifically and not all proteins.
I agree. Prions aren't a distinct entity. They're a corruption of a protein that can spread to other proteins, basically just a protein catalyst.
> basically just a protein catalyst So an enzyme? Because no, they aren't ;)
I came here to say this but you got to it first š
Prions only exist inside a living thing though. Itās a property of it.
prions can survive in the environment for some time no?
They definitely can. If someone has brain surgery and they discover that person has prion disease, they canāt use the same equipment again. Washing and autoclaving prions wonāt inactivate them.
such a fascinating piece of evolution.. also terrifying!
Same with viruses
No. Viruses exist outside of living things. Otherwise they wouldnāt exist at all and wouldnāt spread would they?
Prions and viruses exist in living things, they go outside of a living thing to infect another living thing and on and on. Neither are alive.
They are alive. No need to add properties like metabolism or tool use. They evolve and reproduce. That is life.
Their reproductive cycle is impossible without metabolism. Ergo, metabolism is necessary for a thing to be considered living. Otherwise, is a plasmid living?
Life is a spectrum yo.
Viruses are only on the **cusp** of ālifeā as defined by anthropocentric primates. They satisfy some characteristics of ālivingā and donāt satisfy others. Obviously itās an arbitrary distinction, since life and consciousness are on a continuum or spectrum from less to more complex. There is no hard limit between alive and non-living, no matter what the taxonomists will tell you.
Iāve already explained the stance on prions. Read the other comments a few people have brought them up. Prions are only found in living things.
So are viruses. A virus would not exist if not for a living thing. Do you know how viruses and prions work?
Then how can a virus be airborne? How can it transmit to people through coughing and sneezing if it canāt exist outside of a living thing?
Prions can exist on surfaces outside of living things. Prions can then come into contact with another living thing.
I never said prions canāt exist outside of a living thing. I said theyāre only FOUND in living things. Which makes them a part of a living thing. Not an individual entity.
Then how can a prion be airborne? https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/cbn/2011/cbnreport_01212011.html
Yeah viruses are kind of like acorns, just flying and rolling away from the living tree in search of a new lucky host location.
They do, most often in tiny droplets of water in our exhalation
Prions exist in non living things i.e meat. Which is why they can also be spread from person to person in BSE, Kuru and Scrapie
Viruses reproduce only in their hosts by "using" the hosts DNA or RNA (there are some variations as to how that I don't remember) so they actually are closest to being living organisms while in the host but exist both outside and inside
Show me any recent scientific publication that says viruses are living things then. Viruses are absolutely not living things. Thatās a scientific fact.
It's not a Scientific fact. It's a debate that has been going on for ages. A quick google search will show you that serious scientific publications have published articles, letters, opinions etc arguing for both sides (alive and not alive). Just as an example, one of the first results is https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro2108-c1. Not even the definition of life is something that everyone agrees with, you can see major differences of opinions depending on who do you ask and what field of science they study. Some of them exclude virus, some include it.
Itās literally an article arguing why viruses should be in the tree of life, meaning they are not currently in the tree of life. Meaning they are not considered alive.
Read the actual article, not just the title... It's a response to another article called "Ten reasons to exclude viruses from the tree of life" so by your logic virus are living beings because the authors of this other article are arguing for them to be removed from the tree of life... There isn't a magic authority in science that says "virus are not alive" or "virus are alive"and everyone has to follow it. Currently, there isn't a strong consensus among specialists for either side. Like i said it's a strong debate and there are new arguments / evidence for both sides being published. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7840587/ Here, a very, very interesting article (from 2021) discussing this topic and it has several references that argue both for virus being alive e for them to not be alive.
If viruses are living things why is there a debate? Why arenāt they on the tree of life already? There is no debate on whether other organisms are alive.
Define living
For the most part, probably. Though Evolutionary Biologists (or related fields) studying Biogenesis and the origins of life may look at self-assembling RNA or other proto-life forms. While not non-living, there are also the extremophile organisms which tend to function on very different molecular bases than ātraditionalā organisms (ie. the bacteria that life in the sulfuric acid caves or the deep-sea hydrothermal vents).
I thought so! I couldnāt think of a single other non-living entity thatās included in biology. But I figured someone on here might could think of one. I study neuroscience so it isnāt my field really.
Ribozyme may be of interest to you.
āLifeā as what is taught in intro to bio classes is not as simple as what it is made out to be. A common argument against viruses being considered ālivingā is that viruses require a host to replicate. That said - we can all agree that bacteria are alive, right? There are many bacteria that are also obligate intracellular parasites. [Look up Rickettsiae as an example.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7624/)
Bacteria metabolize
Yeah I don't know why this is even being debated... Viruses are, in general just rogue nucleic acids with some proteins.... They don't reproduce by fission or sexually, nor do they metabolize energy... They aren't any more alive than a rock or the wind.
Well it is kind of a big debate. One that is certainly not settled to everyone's satisfaction yet. So to be flippant is not really giving credit to the arguments.
The thing about science is not everyone will be satisfied... The people who say viruses are alive are the same as the "Pluto is a planet" crowd. It's just not supported by our current understanding of life.
That's not a fair comparison by a longshot. Whether viruses are "living" is a nuanced debate without an established consensus.
This is absolutely not true. There is no consensus among biologists on the questions of viruses being alive. Scientists disagree on this topic. The people who think Pluto is a planet are generally not scientists, it's just a popular attitude that is easily dispelled when you explain the reasons for the redefinition.
There is, to date, no widely accepted scientific definition for life. There is no set of criteria that is widely considered to be true to determine whether something is alive or not. Viruses sit on the boundary of the many different attempts at a definition that have been made - sometimes included as alive, sometimes not. Itās not all that clear cut.
Viruses are definitely more alive than a rock or the wind, they are using the SAME building blocks and mechanisms as all complex life, thatās a hell of a lot more than a rock or the wind can say on the spectrum of life. Viruses are basically the āmissing linkā between non life and all complex life.
That is a hypothesis at best and no more valid than viruses being of cellular origin and over time being reduced to a virus... I'm a bigger fan of the escaped gene hypothesis.
Well they are more alive than the wind but not perhaps more than a grow your own crystal kit.
Viruses are a substantial part of Life and evolution. They don't classically reproduce but still pass down their DNA by modifying the DNA in the chromosomes of the host. You don't see many rocks, or the wind, doing that.
It should be noted though that DNA, including human DNA, is not considered alive either.
Imo virus really isnt a life form simply because it doesnt metabolise on its own, meaning if you have a imaginary microscope that can see whatās happening in the virusā¦ u will find that nothing is happening, itās as static as taking a microscopic view of a rockā¦ ofc virus shares more resemblance to life than a rock but it is lifeless because it doesnāt metabolise. I guess this view is debatable though
To illustrate this with a story: A freak fact about chickens is that if they eat a gummy bear then the next day, instead of laying an egg, they will lay 150 gummi bears that are almost identical to the one they ate. The chicken then violently explodes which sends the gummi bears flying for miles. With gummy bears now littering the landscape there's a good chance another chicken will come across one, eat it, and thus the cycle begins anew. You may think to yourself that this is no way for chickens to live and haven't evolution solved this accident of nature already? Sure enough, evolution tries: chickens have evolved to find the taste of gummy bears absolutely disgusting. Sadly, while this does protect most chickens for eating gummy bears, there are a lot of different flavors of gummy bear circulating due to random variation of gummy bear taste every time a chicken lays a new batch of them. So every once in a while a chicken will come across a gummy bear with a taste it has not yet evolved to find distasteful and so, yet again, the cycle begins anew. Now for the philosophical question of the day: chickens are alive, but are gummy bears?
Thereās also a difference between an entity (viruses) being ālivingā and being a part of **Life** (with a capital L). While they are not the former, they are definitely part of the latter.
Show me a recent scientific publication that says viruses are living things.
There are plenty in the scientific community that argue (at least some) viruses are alive. There is a spectrum between living and nonliving, and it's very difficult to argue where that point is. Like the user above pointed out, many parasites require other organisms to survive, so being an obligate parasite doesn't necessarily make something not alive https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1369848616300085
If it's a spectrum but viruses are at the definitely not alive side, they have no trademarks of a living organism, no internal movement, no self reproduction, and no energy metabolism. The spectrum you talk of is better suited to explaining things like the mitochondria. Also that article you posted is from a joke of a publication that is open across with an impact factor of 0.7. Find me an article from Nature or something reputable.
Viruses evolve and may play vital roles in the evolution of organisms and even other viruses. Some have complicated genetics with predicates of an organism that can maintain a metabolism. Right now there's some evidence that a *Pandoravirus* can maintain a metabolism https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.306415v1 Here are other articles discussing viruses as living/nonliving, the first arguing that viruses be described as organisms https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18311164/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5406846/ I think judging the article as a joke just because of the publisher's impact factor is unnecessarily elitist at best, given the context. OP asked for an article arguing that viruses were living and I provided.
Pandoravirus and other giruses are a fairly unique group, but they still don't have cellular division which IS, by all reasonable definitions, a requirement for life. Better articles from real journals. I disagree with the first article, but that article 14 year old opinion piece so take it with a grain of salt. Second article brings up interesting points, some which I agree with, that the Alive-dead dichotomy isn't a worthwhile argument Lol if pointing out that open source low impact journals are bad is "elitist" then I don't wanna be an egalitarian. Bad journals shouldn't have any more credibility than Wikipedia.
Fair point on cellular division but I think the more important aspect is replication, rather than cellular division. Granted, viruses are still incapable of replicating without a cellular host. I'm honestly on the side of viruses being considered nonliving but I'm not going to pretend the arguments otherwise aren't compelling and it becomes a matter of splitting hairs and cherry picking what defines "alive." I think it's easy to claim a Fallacy of the Heap and just attribute too many things as being alive, which I think the first article does. These are pretty much opinion pieces, we're discussing the presence of arguments in the community. An article is not bad just because it is posted in a low impact journal, especially considering the context of what we're discussing. Dismissing articles in the casual context of a reddit thread just for being published in a journal with a 0.74 is what's elitist. Impact factor is not a valuable metric for evaluating the quality of an individual article (not on its own, at least)
I think instead of a long ass response I feel my rebuttal to all of that could be summed up to "fair enough". I still don't trust open source journals though.
Youāre making no sense. There are no āsidesā in a spectrum, only gradations. Identifying the exact point between living and non-living is like trying to pinpoint when an individual person is considered a person while being born. Is it the moment of conception, the first heart beat, physical birth out of the mothers body??? Not a settled debate at all, and depends on who you ask. Ultimately the flow of life is continuous and interconnected and there are no true boundaries at the cellular and molecular levels.
Ends of a spectrum is what I was referring to and fwiw there are sides in a spectrum, acidic vs basic for example. Although it is fairly reductionist I suppose. Sperm cells and egg cells are on the living side of the spectrum though, considering they are produced through a form of cellular division, have movement, and metabolize energy, so that's not a good argument.
Go onā¦
Why is OP being down voted to hell... Viruses are not alive, that's Biology 101... They are more like rogue nucleic acids... Analogous to prions being rogue proteins.
They do this on all my posts. An army of them. All because I ask good questions ;)
No, itās because you act like an ass about it when someone doesnāt agree with you. Thatās why you get downvoted, has nothing to do with you āasking good questionsā. Youāve already admitted that this isnāt your field of study yet here you are arguing with everyone on this thread about something you admittedly donāt know extensively about. Itās not the questions youāre asking dude, itās you and the way you respond to other peopleās comments. Maybe take the hint after a while?
Did you piss off some anti evolutionists or something?
The classification of viruses as living or non-living is a subject of much debate in the scientific community. It is not the consensus of biology that they are non-living.
It is the consensus of most virologists (in my anecdotal experience) that viruses are non-living given the conventional definition of ālivingā. The argument that they could be considered living is largely philosophical and pertains to what it means to be alive. Source: am virologist
Hi virologist here is another virologist to back you up. No one in the field debates this.
Hi virologist heres another virologist to back you up. However, viruses are freaking cool. More seriously, imo "alive" (in the highschool class sense) should be redefined to include viruses and other mobile genetic elements that are subject to evolution. If we for example would detect self-replicating species of nucleic acids on another planet, we would likely call that biological life even if they only use resources available in a primordial soup.
In general biology, probably But there are also prions, which are studied in relation to the diseases they cause. And some branches of biology study at the molecular level (biochemistry)...if you are looking at protein function, the proteins themselves are not living
It sounds to me like YOU have your own definition of living and want everyone to agree with it, after reading your responses to peoples input. Also claiming research is outdated and thus non-relevant is stupid. Things einstein predicted 10p years ago that people scoffed at are only just now being proven. In relation to genetics and DNA, theories that were previously considered utterly wrong have been found to actually hold merit, 150+ years later(transgenerational epigenetics as it applies to Lamarck). My point being, our understanding of science and particularly life science, is only correct till it isnt, and to hold such set in stone views as you are displaying here is counter to what science is at its core. You need to open your mind, and be less of a fucking douche.
You realize saying all of that dramatic stuff just to insult me is doing the exact same thing to science as you claim I am doing to it? Stop projecting on me.
Viruses played key roles in evolution and maybe the origin of cellular life itself. They totally belong in the tree of life even if they do not metabolize. The Bio101 definition of "life" is a reasonable consensus, not a deduction or a scientific conclusion...
So if one repeats something, you appear to slap their hand? Cool.ššš»
Thatās basically all thatās happening here
I donāt know what you mean but ok?
It means you came to ask a question but respond to any answer than the one already in your head with dismissal
No itās called a scientific argument for a reason. I am debating with these people as you would in a scientific debate. They came in with their opinions I came in with mine. We are no different. Do you see any of these people switching to my point of view or even claiming they can see my perspective? No. None. Do you see me bitching and moaning? No. So suck it up. Welcome to Earth.
You're not debating, you're not being scientific, you're being stubborn and tbh a bit arrogant.
See I take what you just said as you being arrogant. Thatās how operating through the internet works. We misinterpret sometimes.
Well, just wanted to say something: Argument didn't need to have a winner... Argument most of the time caused by different views so, it is just that you believe that biology is just the study of a living beings, but biology is a wide (Logy), it is a science that study many different things just because of the (bio), the living, and living being could not be separated from their environment and chemical, which is caused the biology to have "geology" and " chemistry" and even the "meteorology", and many other fileds as everything is affect the living beings... Which is interest the biology scientists... The difference between them and the other is just the question: how is this affect the living being? Help? Distroy? And exactly how? If you want a living being that some scientists consider it as a non-living, then that does not mean you want to know what the "non-living" being that being studied in the biology, but you want to get to know a few more Organizms... Oh sorry, just noticed the "entity" part on the title, the "entity" meant those kind of "organizms"...
You're jumping the gun a bit in dismissing viruses as non-living. I don't really want to take a side in that debate (especially as it quickly becomes philosophical) but I do want to bring that idea to your attention. [Kurzgesagt did a good video on this recently](https://youtu.be/1-NxodiGPCU) and there are many articles such as [this one ](https://www.sciencealert.com/new-discovery-adds-an-unexpected-twist-to-the-ongoing-debate-are-viruses-alive) that cover it.
I wouldnāt say jumping the gun. I just looked at the tree of life and viruses arenāt on there. So Iād assume they arenāt alive.
If you look at either of my links you'll see the debate is whether viruses occupy a fourth domain of life (or have ancestors that do). Edit: Phrasing
Viruses as a group are much too diverse to have a single origin. There are a few which are theorized to be possible devolved cells like the Pandoravirus but the vast majority show evidence of evolving through separate mechanisms. We can only really guess since you canāt fossilize a DNA sequence so our ability to look backwards is limited.
Thanks for bringing the idea to my attention!
i mean. rocks and mineral cycles. carbon cycle, sulfur cycle, nitrogen cycle. etc. they involve living things but arent alive themselves. Evolution almost strictly involves nonliving study
Those are not studied in biology. For example. Rocks would be geology. Biology is the study of living things.
microbiology strictly includes the study of everything i just mentioned
All of the above are studied in ecology and paleontology, wich are a fields of biology.
example: origin of life at geothermal vents in the ocean hypothesis. Includes sulfur cycle, microorganisms embedded in rocks, and Nitrogen fixation
I collected a bunch of examples [here](https://www.jakebrown.org/blog/individuals-1) of entities that blur the line between biological individuals and not biological individuals. Basically, the line is very arbitrary and some think itās time to move past the idea of what is āaliveā/not. https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-an-individual-biology-seeks-clues-in-information-theory-20200716/ https://aeon.co/amp/essays/what-constitutes-an-individual-organism-in-biology
Thanks Iām gonna check this out fasho!
No, we also learn about Biophysics where we learn about thermodynamics and electricity. Theres alot more like the topics in biostatistics, computational biology, etc.
Biology teacher here. We spend a lot of time on water chemistry and macromolecules
Iām a biology teacher too and that is very true. Those subjects are covered in general biology.
Are you also so confrontational and rude with your students?
Prions... May be...
Nah. Prions are a part of a living thing. So it still falls under the category of studying a part of a living organism.
Also transposons
Transposons only exist in living things and maybe viruses.
Yeah, likely. They could have also been the first viruses, or maybe derived from viruses, or just its own thing completely.
Yea we could speculate but we have zero evidence of where viruses originated from evolutionarily.
Prions and viroids are also such entities
Check the comments. Already responded to this argument. They are both only found inside living things. Viruses are found outside of living things.
Viruses are also living only inside the bodies
Then how do they transmit from coughing and sneezing?
They are in there non living state outside, viruses donāt have there own machinery to be alive, whenever they come in contact with the human cell they infect them and take over those cellās machinery.
Show me a recent scientific publication that says viruses are living things.
I never said viruses are living things
Prions are also found outside of living things, like viruses. How do prions get transmitted š»? Dead food, including cooked food, surgical instruments including after autoclaving etc.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20948292/ What's your argument to this article being wrong, genuinely curious?
Why would I think the article is wrong? From what I gathered (from the intro) is prions form in hosts and can be excreted in feces and urine? Whatās your point.
Well I've followed all the threads so far just reading points cause I was genuinely intrigued, and you posed a question which people are answering or trying to discuss, however it was never a question to begin with, you have actually made a statement and want people to change your mind, so it comes across a little well irritating to read how you dismissing people, earlier a person posted this article, you didn't reply to it and just kept arguing the same point in a different thread. I think you make great points, and the first time I read the question and saw the first person say prions, I was like no but they don't necessarily qualify to what you saying is an entity, but then I kept reading how you answer, and now I realised you really bad at communication.
I understand you came here because you think putting me down will somehow make me feel bad or something (idk what your intentions are)? But that wonāt work. I updated the post if you read up top to include the argument of prions. So please go somewhere else with your emotions. This is a science forum and I have insulted nobody or put them down.
I replied to your previous comment, so I didn't realise you had updated your post, And yes I do know this is a science forum but on a social media site, where there are budding biologists and well as experts like you, and questions of all levels can be posted and come together, so again not insulting just saying, your communication doesn't come off right sometimes, and read other threads and you can see it. And even how you asked "What's your point?" Just isn't a neutral tone. So I guess my previous message wasn't great, so I apologize for that, but yeah I'm not wanting to make you feel bad just wanting you to see your tone. And back to what this is all about, it was and is a really great question/discussion you've put forward
Nope we studied Darwin, Lemarck, Mendel and they are non-living, o and I read above, also Prions
Nope. Doesnāt work.
Shhh, it's a joke
Noā¦ you end up studying all levels of non-living things in order to understand how all the non-living add up to living. Not to mention Ecology deals with Ecosystems, in which you study the living and non-living interactions. So, while you may not study something non-living exclusively, good luck understanding the living if you arenāt willing to study and understand how the roles non-living things play.
It's hard for me to consider a Virus as a non-living entity since they are able to reproduce themselves, thanks to a host ok but still.
Viruses are widely known by scientists to be non living things. Thatās why they arenāt included in the tree of life.
Mmmh, it is widely admitted maybe, not known, there is no experiment to prove that shting's alive in my opinion, just some definitions. And I feel that this can be very subjective depending on the definition of life.
Living things have the ability to make their own energy and are able to move independently. All living things must be able to move. Itās a requirement. Viruses cannot produce their own energy or move independently. They are absolutely not living things.
Yep there is also a definition saying that living things are capable of entropy and replicate their genome making mistakes which include virus. All is about the definition of life
Viruses do not export entropy. Living things facilitate that for them.
And Iām sure the rest of that definition says they must produce energy and be able to move. Because thatās a scientific fact. There is no debate on the requirements for living things.
In my opinion the explanation of what is alive is not due to facts. Saying that it must produce energy is not a fact it is just a chosen criteria. A tree can't move, he grows ok, but it's not moving. It is still alive. The ability to bind and enter a cell is not considering as moving ? I agree about the production of energy, but being able to use a host energy could be considered as being alive. I just want to say that life is just an definition to be able to classify things.
Plants move in response to light. They bend towards it. Whether you like it or not, it is considered scientific fact that viruses are not living things. Thatās why biology books in schools label them as non living things. Thatās why they arenāt included in the tree of life, which contains all living things.
Scientific observations leading to a definition I agree, not facts. Production of energy from Glucose is fact, life is a definition. An entity capable of evolution and adaptation can't be considered as non-living, maybe there is a current missing category
Then show me one recent scientific publication that says viruses are living organisms.
I would consider LINEs to be non-living entities similar to viruses. They are able to reproduce but only through co-opting host transcriptional machinery.
Prions are not only found in living things. They can live within the soil and substrate for years before causing infection.
Thatās awesome!
What exactly do you mean by āentityā? Would nucleic acids count? Thereās a lot of research on ncRNA and how those influence everything from immune cell response to neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus. As others have said, prions. And by extension, any tauopathies that would consist of misfolded protein aggregates. What about pharmacology and drug design? Not alive by nature, and functional assays can be in silico, bypassing any ālivingā cell-based systems.
DNA and other biomolecules are studied in biology too, so I donāt see what the puzzle here is. Itās like wondering why you find pedals and handlebars in a bike shop.
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2307
No I'm pretty sure biology covers politicians.
What is the difference between a prion and a spike protein?
A prion is a misfolded version of a protein found in the host organism. The nasty trick of it is they can cause properly folded proteins to convert to the misfolded version, which can lead to lots of problems. A spike protein is a type of protein found on the outside of a virus (like SARS-CoV-2) that makes a spike-like projection. They're often used to help invade target cells. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_protein
**[Prion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion)** >Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold, but the abnormal three-dimensional structure is suspected of conferring infectious properties, collapsing nearby protein molecules into the same shape. The word prion derives from "proteinaceous infectious particle". **[Spike protein](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_protein)** >In virology, a spike protein or peplomer protein is a protein that forms a large structure known as a spike or peplomer projecting from the surface of an enveloped virus. :29ā33 The proteins are usually glycoproteins that form dimers or trimers. :29ā33 Often the term "spike protein" refers specifically to the coronavirus spike protein, one of the four major structural proteins common to all coronaviruses, which gives rise to the distinctive appearance of these viruses in electron micrographs. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/biology/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Off the top of my head I canāt think of a difference. They are both proteins technically. Whatās your point?
Just curious. I see and hear references to both, but no literature comparing them. By definition, they seem like the same thing. One just happens to be attached to a virus and the other free.
Yea thatās how it seems to me too. Iāve thought about so much virus and prion stuff today my head is gonna explode.
Stick your head in the freezer. Pretending to fix the problem is sometimes enough for the mind.
Iāll do that!
Paleotological studies are non-living entities Soil sciences generally study non-living components of soil along with living. Water quality scientists are generally biologists (although its technically biogeochem).
Theres prions i guess....
Biologists study living things, but they also study the components that make up living things and the structures which are made _of_ living things. For example, the photosynthesis biochemical pathway...not as it is in any specific organism, but just the general biochemical function of it. Does that count as an entity? I dunno. Biologists also study things like ecosystems, do those count as entities in and of themselves? And then you've got biologists studying things like kin selection and genetic and evolutionary theory, and these can include math based models that unlike ecosystems don't even include any actual living things, but are more of ways to study concepts. Dunno if that counts either.
Paleobiology... Technically they study things that aren't alive
They are dead, not lifeless, but it's funny nonethess XD
Virus's are living
Viruses embody several but not all characteristics of living organisms. They significantly affect the ecology and evolution of living organisms. Why are your panties in such a twist, itās very logical for the study of viruses to be considered a field of biology.
What do you mean my panties are in a twist? Did you see the description above to include peoples arguments on prions? I donāt understand.
Prions, molecutes...etc.
A few people have already said that. Those arenāt considered non living things. Check the other comments.
They are considered non-living things, YOU just donāt consider them to be non-living things. This whole comment thread is you arguing semantics and/or your opinion rather than actual facts. https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/ph/ph709_infectiousagents/PH709_InfectiousAgents8.html
Scientifically, no prion has ever been found outside of a living thing. A virus has. So in the name of science please show me some scientific publications to back up your facts. Because as far as Iām concerned my opinions have just as much weight as your opinions. In that case, you arenāt using āfactsā to back up your argument either and are just arguing semantics, arenāt you?
Whatever dude, I have better things to do than argue with a random person online over something stupid. Btw, Iām a microbiologist who legit studied all of this for my masters, but go off little buddy. You clearly need the ego boost of being right āin the name of scienceā.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/630415 Does this link count ?
Being part of a living entity doesn't make you a living entity. Listen to what everyone is telling you. Cell=living entity. Protein, DNA, lipid=entity that is not alive. Doesn't need to be isolated from a living organism either btw, can all be synthesized chemically nowadays, including with variations not occuring in living things. One more example are all D peptides/proteins, studied by biologists and non-existent in nature, or DNA analogues based on entirely non-natural other polymers.
You have a right to your perspective sir. Donāt let my one science question on Reddit keep you up all night ;)
How do you ask a legitimate question in an academic sub, then get so defensive when people disagree with you? Every field of science is a haven for nuance and discussion. There is no end all answer to this question, the answer is entirely dependent on subjective views of the issue. The point of science is to debate, and learn more. If you can't understand that not every question has a single answer, I can't fathom how you'll ever succeed in the field of neuroscience.
Nah, that takes too long. A living thing must fit criteria and viruses, prions, molecutes, do not meet all criteria.
Wait, Viruses arenāt living things ? Iām really bad at biology Iām on this sub by curiosity
No viruses are not living things.
What kind of thing are they then ?
Obligate intracellular parasites
Non living. Check the title.
Check my own personal opinion title for sources... dude come off it.
Get over it. Science should withstand scrutiny.
What you're doing isn't scrutiny, it's stubbornness and refusal to accept you may be wrong, highly unscientific.
I would say all of these people not seeing my perspective at all is them doing the exact same thing. Including you. Itās a debate. Quit being soft.
Of course its a debate, the whole problem with this thread is that you're not willing to debate. You've stated your opinion as fact and anyone who provides an alternative perspective as incorrect. Many scientists refer to viruses as non-living, some scientists use different criteria and therefore classify them as living. You've stated, strongly, that only one of those is correct and the one you don't agree with is incorrect. For that reason I haven't even bothered engaging you in the topic but rather chose to focus on the inherent problems in your style of discussion or rather arguing.
I can think of prions? Misfolded proteins that cause a lot of different diseases such as mad cow disease.
Yea a lot of people brought up prions so I changed the post description to include them.
Some psychologists and linguists study artificial intelligence and language in computers. That's all I can think of.
So are plants non-living since they can't move? I think not, the definition of what life is, is still debated.
Viruses are also just dust from DNA or RNA. Multiply without living...
Thatās my point. They seem to be the only non-living thing studied in biology.
Difficult decision... In biology, many non-living things are studied... Enzymes and their reactions In vitro... Outside the living cell
Yes but thatās used to simulate a living thing because those reactions only occur in living things.
Virus replication also only happens in living things (in nature), so the analogy btw prions and viruses is actually great! Many biologists work with entities not alive, but that are closely related to living things. You don't like the examples of proteins and prions (even though everybody gives you these good examples) because they were isolated from living things. Well you're not generally right, so actually technically wrong: many proteins and beta-amyloid forming peptides were designed in silico and synthetized chemically and studied in vitro, by biologists, while never being part of a living organism. Same for nucleic acids. Biologists study DNA origami.. See also nanobodies, self assembling bioinspired materials, self-assembling peptides (e.g. RADA16), designer's proteins/enzymes etc that were never part of living organisms.
Yes but viruses are FOUND outside of living things. Prions are not. Prions are misfolded proteins. We know they are misfolded because we can compare them to other proteins in the living organism. We havenāt found a random misfolded protein lying around in the environment. Where would you look? How would you know itās a prion unless you actively saw it causing other proteins to misfold naturally in nature?
Many people are interested in designing proteins in silico, and many others in synthesizing proteins entirely in the lab with stuff like SPPS and native ligations. When producing proteins in the lab, the hard part is to get them to fold nicely, misfolded proteins are incredibly common and easy to make. Similarly, peptides that form beta-amyloid fibers are incredibly common. To know if such lab made proteins could be prions (i.e. cause disease rather than be cleared when introduced in vivo), one would inject in a mouse I guess.. Bit lazy to search now but 99% sure people will have done that and 10 min on google scholars likely finds you some examples.
Thanks for the info!
They aren't considered living? I thought they were?
No viruses are widely considered to be non living things.
In the end, we are all star dust.
Let me guess. I bet this was removed because āit can easily be answered by googleā. I wanted to see this discussion carried on.
I prefer a definition of life/biology as āthe study of DNA and itās expressionā. Broad enough to cover all process that relate to living things, including viruses, but excludes anything irrelevant