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Asked by flossie to Samuel, Richard, Nikolai, Cristiane on 18 Mar 2015.
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Nikolai Adamski answered on 18 Mar 2015:
Good question!
Scientists have tried to define life and set up a couple of requirements. To be classified as a living organism you need to fulfill most of these requirements. Viruses fail to fulfill enough of these requirements, so they are actually not classified as living organisms.
A virus is a form of extreme parasite. It needs to infect a host cell in order to “come alive”.
Imagine a host cell to be a factory. The factory has a certain amount of orders for items to be produced. There are workers and supervisors there.
In this scenario a virus would be a high priority email sent to the factory, telling the workers to stop what they’re doing and instead do something else.
I hope that all makes sense to you 🙂
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Samuel Ellis answered on 18 Mar 2015:
As Nikolai puts it, viruses do lack certain qualities to be technically living organisms. But at the same time they have their own viral DNA and have mechanisms to replicate when they infect host cells.. so in a way they can be thought of as alive as well ^^
They are quite strange in general really, but very important due to their effects on world health!
Comments
bnysh commented on :
I think that’s a really good answer helped me a lot … thank youu