Virology: Should Viruses Be Alive?

One debate that scientists have pushed and pulled upon ever since the study of virology began, is whether or not viruses should be classified as a living organism or not. Living things are highly organized, and have may other characteristics that accompany it. The general agreement among scientists is that there are seven main characteristics of life; cellular organization, metabolism and energy use, response to stimuli, regulation and homeostasis, growth and development, evolution, and reproduction. Viruses share many of these characteristics, while lacking some and others debated upon. Many scientists argues that viruses are alive because viruses have levels of organization. All living organisms contain small building blocks that come together to make …show more content…
All living things must maintain homeostasis. But because viruses do not contain nuclei, cytoplasm, or other organelles, they do not have a way to monitor and maintain their internal environment. Some may argue that virions, the state viruses are in outside of a host cell, maintains homeostasis because the capsid envelopes the virus DNA to resist changes in the environment. However, this is an invalid argument because nothing changes inside a virion. The capsid is simply there to coat and protect the DNA, and is impotent to adapt or respond to environmental changes. Virions are merely dormant and inert, only waiting to infiltrate a host cell. Another argument scientists make in favor of viruses being alive is that they reproduce. But there is no fine line between the way viruses reproduce and how other organisms reproduce. Unlike other cells, viruses do not possess the necessary tools to make a copy of their DNA. They require a host cell to reproduce by hijacking the cell’s own replication system and inserting their own DNA. This forces the cell to reconfigure into producers of the original intruding virus, and make countless replicas of the virus. Because of this, the term “replicate”