Question of whether viruses are alive or not has lead to many deep discussions and extensive research to be able to provide a proper answer. There are many people, including scientists, can agree that viruses are not alive. According to Brown and Bhella, viruses can not sustain themselves for too long without being in contact with a host cell. Viruses coat their DNA or RNA strands with a coat of protein. Each virus varies in size and shape. Viruses need to infect a host cell in order to multiply and proliferate. They rely on the host cells to provide them with metabolic processes for replication purposes.
If viruses are not alive, does that mean they do not communicate? According to research paper written by Erez and Shamir, they discovered that viruses can communicate with each other when they take over a host cell. While they were studying the behavior of bacterial cells that have been infected by a virus, they found that the host cells produced unusual amounts of chemical signals. However, these signals were not triggered by the bacteria’s DNA, it was produced by the virus. The chemical signals produced are in a form of a protein. This allows them to communicate with other host cells that are infected by other viruses.
Even if not every one considered viruses as alive, viruses still evolve. Take SARS-COV-2 as an example, it is changing and mutating until now. Thus, it is the most dangerous and infectious virus that we had to deal with in decades. SarS-COV-2 can change its surface shape from one virus to another. It changes the order and structure of the protein layer that allows it to enter the host cell, making it easier to infect a cell.
References:
Alexey Solodovnikov (Idea, Producer, CG, Editor), Valeria Arkhipova (Scientific Сonsultant),
CC BY-SA 4.0 Wikimedia Commons.
Brown, N. and Bhella, D., 2016. Are viruses alive. Microbiology Today, 43(2), pp.58-61.
Erez, Z., Steinberger-Levy, I., Shamir, M. et al. Communication between viruses guideslysis–lysogeny decisions. Nature 541, 488–493 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21049
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 