Is a virus a living organism?
What you need to know is that all viruses have a common characteristic. They have genes; they have genetic information like we do, like every living thing does. Yet, they are not quite alive. So they have genes that are protected in a protein-coat layer that can be formed in multiple different ways and structure, and different viruses have different kind of structure that have different subtleties that way. These simple things that have no metabolism of their own, they really not living in a strict sense of the word. You like to see of something alive that has its own metabolism, that has its own biochemistry. This is sort of nothing, just genes and protein shells. And it uses us to reproduce, ‘us' meaning ourselves, from an animal, when we are talking about viruses infecting animals and humans. So, part of the definition that many scientists give to a virus is that it is an ‘obligate parasite'. What does that mean? It means it can not reproduce by itself. It reproduces only in a cell. This means that the virus can only reproduce itself by usurping our machinery, our cells' machinery. It has its genes that can make this or that protein to help it reproduce or to help it avoid the immune system. But it is greatly reliant on many things in our cells to reproduce itself. So outside the cell, virus can not even reproduce. So do you call that living? It always gets into its limit of what is living or what is not. No metabolism of its own, it can only replicate inside your cell. Period.
