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Surprise! One final entry in my Five Kingdoms of Life project; the Virus "Kingdom"
Viruses are not technically part of a kingdom. Technically, they are not part of life, instead being placed in a kind of grey area between life and non-life. However, there is heavy debate about this issue. One one hand, they lack key features present in living organisms, including the ability to reproduce on their own. On the other hand, they use their DNA and RNA contains the same bases as ours, and some viruses such as Mimivirus are highly complex and posses typically cellular genes.
Whether they are truly a part of the tree of life or not, viruses are highly important for living things. They can infect all other organisms, and to do this, they vary more in their genetics and genome structure than all the other kingdoms combined. Of course, viruses don't set out to kill their hosts (although that often happens), their only concern is to replicate. I guess it can be said that that is true of all organisms, but viruses seem to be the most direct at going about this.
Viruses are not technically part of a kingdom. Technically, they are not part of life, instead being placed in a kind of grey area between life and non-life. However, there is heavy debate about this issue. One one hand, they lack key features present in living organisms, including the ability to reproduce on their own. On the other hand, they use their DNA and RNA contains the same bases as ours, and some viruses such as Mimivirus are highly complex and posses typically cellular genes.
Whether they are truly a part of the tree of life or not, viruses are highly important for living things. They can infect all other organisms, and to do this, they vary more in their genetics and genome structure than all the other kingdoms combined. Of course, viruses don't set out to kill their hosts (although that often happens), their only concern is to replicate. I guess it can be said that that is true of all organisms, but viruses seem to be the most direct at going about this.
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Viruses are so fascinating. I loved my course on virology I took in college. Lack of cell structure is another reason they are not considered a life form. Bacteriophage are my favorites. Such cool designs. I even used some in a story once.