Are Viruses Alive?

Fig. 1 Abiotic or Biotic?

I. Rock And Roll

In a recent Dredd Blog post the subject of whether or not rocks are alive was discussed (On The Origin of The Containment Entity - 7).

The author of the article linked-to in that post, although not a virologist,  concluded:

"Conclusion

So trovants aren’t technically alive, this isn’t some horror movie waiting to happen. However, these rocks do change over exceptionally long periods of time.

Although not strictly alive, trovants have some characteristics of something that is living. Although not sentient, these rocks do grow and move. 

It is not surprising that they have become the stuff of myth to the locals over the centuries. They are the closest thing to living we can consider rock to be and have been around much longer than any human on the planet, thus having encountered more “life” than all of us!"

(Romania’s Enigmatic Trovants: Living Rocks That Grow and Move!). It does not take an education in virology to disassemble the myths about Trovants.

II. It Takes A Virology Education To ...

Concerning viruses, a commercial virologist had more of a problem concluding that a virus is sorta, kinda, maybe alive, depending:

"Hello everyone. I'm Vincent Racaniello and this is Virus Watch, the weekly video report, and what's happening in the amazing world of viruses. Today we're going to tackle the thorny question that always generates a lot of discussion. Are viruses alive? First we have to define life. It's not very easy to do and many people disagree on the exact definition on what is living. But we have to have a definition otherwise we can't answer the question of whether viruses are alive or not. So here we go. Something that's living should have most of these following properties: it should be composed of one or more cells; it should have homeostasis (this is the ability to regulate important properties such as pH or temperature); it should have the ability to make or generate energy; to grow and to adapt to new environments by evolution; also to respond to stimuli (like a plant moving towards light); and of course it must be able to make more of itself, to reproduce. Here's a model of a simple virus that happens to be poliovirus. The virus particle consists of a protein shell that you can see. It's this plastic shell that protects the RNA genome that's inside of it. On its own this virus particle doesn't meet any of the requirements for being alive; it's not a cell; it doesn't have homeostasis; it can't make energy; can't adapt to new environments; it can't evolve; and can't reproduce. This particle here can't do any of these things. But wait, viruses do evolve right, and they do replicate of course. So what's going on? The key is that all the things carried out by viruses happen only after the virus enters a cell." ... I define a virus as an organism with two phases."

(Virology Blog, Youtube transcript, emphasis added). Vincent Racaniello did not originally embrace the "an organism with two phases" hypothesis, or struggle with a definition:

"Viruses are not living things. Viruses are complicated assemblies of molecules, including proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and carbohydrates, but on their own they can do nothing until they enter a living cell.Without cells, viruses would not be able to multiply. Therefore, viruses are not living things."

(Virology Blog, Virology 101). So, Vincent Racaniello now has the mind of two scientists who have opposing views combined into one.

His view is a composite, a view with "two phases",  however, the "yes, viruses are alive" scientist in the following link concludes with "Alive or not, viruses are doing rather well!" (Are Viruses Alive).

The problem is not just semantic as Vince, Nigel, and David assert, because they also infer that it is a nomenclature problem (as does Dredd Blog: Good Nomenclature: A Matter of Life and Death, 2, 3).

Those three commercial scientists also use the word "organism" to refer to a virus, but that is also loosy goosy nomenclature:

"Viruses are not typically considered to be organisms because they are incapable of autonomous reproduction, growth or metabolism. Although some organisms are also incapable of independent survival and live as obligatory intracellular parasites, they are capable of independent metabolism and procreation. Although viruses have a few enzymes and molecules characteristic of living organisms, they have no metabolism of their own; they cannot synthesize and organize the organic compounds from which they are formed. Naturally, this rules out autonomous reproduction: they can only be passively replicated by the machinery of the host cell. In this sense, they are similar to inanimate matter."

(Wikipedia, Organism). Organism smorganism, alive is dead and dead is alive, "we want them dead or alive" is not only and old western wanted poster position, it is also the "take home" from the dialogue of those scientists.

III. Bifurcation Is Not Just For Bipeds Anymore

In the Dredd Blog series ("Weekend Rebel Science Excursion") the failure to keep the notion of evolution a single historical sequence was elaborated upon:

"Regular readers know that in various and sundry posts on the Dredd Blog System we have bemoaned the dearth of research within evolutionary circles concerning the subject of abiotic evolution or Abiology.

I have even done so to the point that I now encourage more scientific textbooks with the title "Abiology 101" in addition to and in contrast with "Biology 101" (see e.g. Did Abiotic Intelligence Precede Biotic Intelligence?, Putting A Face On Machine Mutation - 3).

A fair definition of Biology is:

... the science of life or living matter in all its forms and phenomena, especially with reference to origin, growth, reproduction, structure, and behavior.

(Dictionary, emphasis added). A fair definition of Abiology, then, ought to be:

... the science of non-life or non-living matter in all its forms and

phenomena, especially with reference to origin, growth, reproduction, structure, and behavior.

(see e.g. abiological). One problem or question that biologists struggle with is the art of defining life (Erwin Schrodinger, PDF), but, to be sure that arises most often inside the twilight-zone between the abiotic and the biotic realms."

 (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 27)., cf. If Cosmology Is "Off," How Can Biology Be "On?").

IV. Closing Comments

Nomenclature problems have caused life to become death in even high tech situations (Good Nomenclature: A Matter of Life and Death).

If we don't know the difference because of bad nomenclature, it would seem that we don't have the capacity to change it.

After billions of years, you haven't come a long way baby (How Microbes Communicate In The Tiniest Language).