How do the characteristics of life demonstrate that viruses are not alive?
Viruses feed, grow and multiply. How they do that may be different from complete cells. Influenza is caused by a virus and it certainly multiplies and spreads. I am sorry I cannot give the answer you will like. Viruses are alive. Edit: Influenza or the Flu is an infection, disease or sickness caused by the Influenza virus. Yellow Fever is a disease caused by the Yellow Fever virus. I agree that viruses are not cells and are not organisms but they are made up of living matter of a core of nucleic acid within a protein shell.
Viruses can be identified as non-living organisms because in their cells you can not find mitochondria nor any other type of organelles found in living organisms. They can not live or reproduce outside a host cell. Therefore, if they don’t have a host to infect they can’t survive or live making them non-living organisms. Viruses consist of two or three parts: all viruses have genes made from either DNA or RNA, long molecules that carry genetic information; all have a protein coat that protects these genes; and some have an envelope of fat that surrounds them when they are outside a cell. Viruses vary in shape from simple helical and icosahedral shapes, to more complex structures. They are about 100 times smaller than bacteria. The origins of viruses are unclear: some may have evolved from plasmids—pieces of DNA that can move between cells—others may have evolved from bacteria.
A living thing is, by definition, cellular. Viruses are not cellular, and are therefore not living. Edit: I wanna clear something up. Below me, someone one mentioned that influenza is caused by a virus and reproduces therefore it is alive. First of all, influenza is a virus. Secondly, it cannot reproduce on it’s own. What it does is hijack a cell and implant its DNA into that cell. The hijacked cell then undergoes crazed mass production of viruses until the point that they burst from the cell and spread throughout the body to repeat this process with other cells. This process of course kills the cells.
