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viruses
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
Okay, this got me curious. From the wikipedia article on viruses:
I’m no scientist but I’d say, “Do it reproduce? Do it evolve? Do it try to survive? Bruh, it’s alive.”
I’m no scientist though. Just an idiot watching thangs. :p
Not by themselves, no. They need to take over a cell's replication machinery for that.
Yes, as they are subject to natural selection.
I don't think so, they don't try anything to do anything, they just are... but the same can probably be said for most actually living organisms, including many relatively complex ones, so I don't think it can be used as a way to determine if something is alive or not.
Most interesting definition, I think, comes from contrapposto. Can it die? No. So long as it retains its "shape" more or less, it functions. If heated or denatured, it no longer functions. More like broken than dead.