Characteristics of living things (50 points)

living things share 8 characteristics (listed in chapter 1 of your textbook on page 19). a living thing grows, undergoes metabolism, responds to its environment, reproduces, passes dna to the next generation, maintains homeostasis, changes over time, and is made up of cells. a non-living thing may seem to do one or more of these things, but to be classified as living; all eight characteristics must be present. sometimes, you may see something that seems alive but is not. though you can’t see it, you have likely experienced it; one of those things is a virus.

answer both of the following questions:

using all 8 of the characteristics that define life, indicate which one(s) viruses have and which one(s) they do not, and explain each difference.
with these results, present an argument that a virus is a living thing. then, present the opposite argument that viruses are not alive.

The only living characteristic of viruses are that they reproduce but only inside the host body, using its machinery they can mutate and change over time. In the case of retroviruses, DNA can be passed to succeeding generations.

the non living characteristics of viruses include that they are not cells; they lack plasma membrane, cytoplasm and cellular organelles and they can not undergo metabolism. they can not maintain homeostasis as they crystallize out of the host body. they can not grow, just multiply using the host machinery.

considering some facts that viruses can reproduce inside hosts body, and that they can mutate we can say that they are living.

but flipping the coin, viruses are not cells, they lack cytoplasm and organelles and they crystallize out of the host body. We can say that they are non-living.

but up till now biologists place viruses on a border line of living and non living.

Explanation:

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