The virus is a living creature and it shares its ancestors with modern cells

The virus is a living creature, and in the old days it also has cells like bacteria, fungi, plants and even animals today. That was the surprising conclusion of scientists after studying the evolutionary history of viruses and cells. This study provides more strong evidence to support the notion that the virus is a living organism, if this is widely accepted, it will be an extremely important change for the universal biology that we have ever been. learn.

Evidence shows that the virus is a living organism

In the past, it was not recognized that the virus is a typical living organism because it has no cell structure, most of them cannot live independently because there is no enzyme system to carry out biochemical reactions for metabolism and neither does it able to reproduce. Therefore, people put viruses into infertility . However, this conclusion is still controversial and its origin is unknown.

To further investigate the origin of the virus and its relationship with the cell, two evolutionary biologists Gustavo Caetano-Anollés and Arshan Nasir have compared protein protein rolls (Protein Fold) of 3,460 species. virus with 1,620 cells. Roll is a basic structure that helps create complex shapes of proteins and different viruses or cells will carry a genetic code that regulates different protein coil structures.

Comparison is an effective method for studying evolutionary history, especially for viruses. Most viruses are constantly changing so their genetic code changes very quickly and this inadvertently masks the ancient genetic traces. But the protein's roll structure is always retained even when the genetic code changes and this is a solid basis for studying the evolutionary history of viruses and cells.

In this study, two biologists discovered that there were 442 protein-like structures that were similar between viruses and cells. At the same time, they discovered 66 new virus-only protein coil structures. When biologists want to determine when they compare two related living entities, they will find a great number of similarities and some differences between them. According to the researchers, this finding has come to the conclusion that viruses and cells once shared the origin of evolution.

Viruses are living creatures in the form of "a plant in a host cell"

This research has provided additional evidence to support the argument that the virus is a living organism and not just a 'packaged genetic code'. This argument of course still causes a lot of controversy in the scientific world. However, two researchers Caetano-Anollés and Nasir said: 'Viruses must be considered a living organism, reproducing by an atypical method of infecting cells . This way of life is different from the life cycle of parasitic bacteria.

According to two researchers, to determine if the virus can reproduce and metabolize it, it is important to consider the 'virus factory' inside a host cell rather than what it was before. We often think of viruses - particles called virions exist outside the cell and cannot reproduce. "The nature of viral autonomy is an intracellular virus plant inside the host cell, not virions," the team argues .

A host cell will reproduce by creating new viruses, then infect other cells to continue to establish a 'virus factory' and the team thinks that the process is similar to the way organisms are. usually produce gametes to form zygotes. On the other hand, host cells also produce proteins to provide the production of new virions.

Hypothesis about the origin of the virus

The two researchers believe that the most feasible explanation for this discovery is that modern viruses and cells have the same ancestry. They call the ancient living organization a proto-virocell and it has spread so many other versions that evolved to the 'intracellular virus factory' as it is today. It is possible that the proto-virocell was very early in life formation, and then the cells would be very different from today: it could have its genome stored in many RNA segments and also very lacking. More complex structures than today's cells.

Over time, natural selection causes the proto-virocell to evolve into smaller and smaller cells and smaller genes. Finally, this process created today's modern virus with many times smaller in size than the cell and the simpler gene set.