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EXCLUSION. "If you look at a tree that shows all living organisms on it, you will not find viruses there. This is because viruses are completely dependent on another organism to live, and cannot survive without the other organism. Viruses cannot reproduce, or make more viruses, unless they are in, or on, another organism. But once they have access to the resources they need, viruses seem very much alive, as they reproduce and become part of the food chain." https://lnkd.in/e3zZDuE View in LinkedIn

TREE OF LIFE. "Darwin provided a great unifying theory for biology; its visual expression is the universal tree of life. The tree concept is challenged by the occurrence of horizontal gene transfer and...by the omission of viruses." https://lnkd.in/dB5sPBH View in LinkedIn

NON-AUTONOMOUS. "Dependence on another organism for survival is not unique to viruses, and even some bacteria and fungi can’t go it solo." Same can be said for computer viruses. https://lnkd.in/dBXpMbs View in LinkedIn

VIRUSES "parasitize essentially all biomolecular aspects of life. That is, they depend on the host cell for the raw materials and energy necessary for nucleic acid synthesis, protein synthesis, processing and transport, and all other biochemical activities that allow the virus to multiply and spread." https://lnkd.in/dHuVTgq View in LinkedIn

GIANT VIRUSES. "Within the last decade, developments in virology have started to reveal more and more that viruses might in fact be alive. One was the discovery of mimiviruses, giant viruses with large genomic libraries that are even bigger than some bacteria. To put this in perspective, some viruses, like the Ebola virus, have as few as seven genes." https://lnkd.in/eH7hpgG View in LinkedIn

MODERN MALADY. "If a virus be neither organism nor molecule, what is its nature? What is a virus? It is a malady of our time that words are often deprived of their meaning." https://lnkd.in/dDiKsry View in LinkedIn

REDUCTIVE EVOLUTION. “The interesting thing about these results is that they indicate that viruses must have diversified from ancient cells by a process called reductive evolution, where organisms simplify instead of becoming more complex." The ultimate in outsourcing. https://lnkd.in/eH7hpgG View in LinkedIn

BAG OF TRICKS. "Biologists long favored the view that viruses were mere boxes of chemicals." https://lnkd.in/dHuVTgq View in LinkedIn

INCLUSION IN THE TREE. "It suggests that viruses were not simply shed genetic material of cells, but shared unique properties with cells (and thus were living) and eventually evolved as separate entities. “We are now able to build truly universal trees of life...that describe the origin and diversification of organisms and viruses.” https://lnkd.in/eH7hpgG View in LinkedIn

CRYSTALIZED VIRUS. "Their demotion to inert chemicals came after 1935, when Wendell M. Stanley and his colleagues, at what is now the Rockefeller University in New York City, crystallized a virus— tobacco mosaic virus—for the first time." https://lnkd.in/dHuVTgq View in LinkedIn