Are Viruses Alive?

Are viruses alive? This question has stumped scientists for years now
as some agree they are alive, and others believe they are not. Both
sides have valid points, but with a new scientific paper that just came
out, the authors are hoping to convince the scientific community that
they are. There are 9 main functions of cells that help consider them
alive. I chose 3 questions I thought were important in determining if a
something is alive or not, they are as followed. Can they reproduce
without a host cell? Can they evolve by exchanging their DNA with
other viruses or organisms? And finally, can they use their genetic
make-up to function?
Re-using a protein folds means that it is common or shared
between types of viruses or cells. Using Figure 1 C-D, We see the most
use in protein folds in ssDNA. This is because on the graph you can see
it doesn't have a square except for the line at the bottom. This means
that there are very few unique folds and that the folds are mostly used
in in multiple places. This supports the escaped gene hypothesis
because they are selfish genetic elements that are retaining their own
protein folds instead of using the cells proteins, which would have
different folds from cell to cell or using different virions to infect other
cells.
Figures 3-4 and Table 4 can help us get a sense of anything
interesting about a type of virus and what its genome carries. Viruses
can infect archaea, bacteria, and eukarya. In these viruses, RNA viral
subgroups were found only in eukaryotes and a lot of DNA viruses
infected prokaryote hosts. This means that different kinds of viruses
containing different genetic material are able to access different
things. The FSFs that were present in Figure 3C were existent early on
in evolution and were detected in all 3 groups. This could suggest that
viruses originated in the early stages of cell development. These
viruses all have dsDNA in them which is important to early life because
dsDNA is the genetic material in a lot of modern cells, suggesting that
viruses might have helped introduce dsDNA into early cells or these
cells were better able to replicate their genome as compared to RNA.
The title of this article makes it seem as if they are trying to
prove that viruses are alive, however the research did not really
address any of my questions. It gave me information on how they can
use their genetic makeup or that they can reproduce without a host
cell. This article seemed to be a starting point for this information, but
not a means to prove that viruses are real. So I would say that the data
alone did not prove to me that viruses are alive, more so that they are
related or have learn to coevolve with them, developing similar protein
folds.
In the discussion, the authors talk about the three different
hypotheses, one being the reductionist hypothesis. The reductionist

hypothesis definitely fits my understanding of the data they presented.

Viruses contain characteristics that they could be involved in early with
cell life, so the fact that they lost their ribosomal function would make
sense. If they had the ability to make ribosomes previously then they
probably could reproduce without a cell, and even exchange genes
with other cells like in bacterial conjugation. This idea would fit the
idea that viruses once had more function on their own but lost it as
they became more dependent on cells. Other possibilities include the
fact that they may have had some ribosomal function but other cells
were able to access it easier so they lost their function.
The authors addressed my questions in the discussion. I was
surprised because I felt like they didnt really talk about the research
they had done so much as other information that they are putting
together. I originally thought that viruses would not be considered
alive, but they made me reconsider. There are intracellular virus
factories present inside large viruses that take energy from the
mitochondria, have ribosomes, and produce virions. While they are in a
host cell, they are still technically doing all the work themselves which
is most important and these virus factories have ribosomes which
means they have to be able to have access to their genetic make-up
somehow. Finally, the viruses can evolve by taking some of the hosts
DNA. So as you can see there is compelling evidence that viruses could
be considered alive. They act like parasites that are considered to be
alive, so why does it matter if they have to infect a cell to be able to
carry out these processes if a parasite also relies on another organism.

Works Cited
Caetano-Anolles, Gustave & Nasir, Arshan. (2015, Sept 25). A
phylogenetic datadriven exploration of viral origins and evolution. Science
Advances, 1, n.p. doi:
10.1126/sciadv.1500527.