[rtembreull]

rtembreull asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Do viruses have a metabolism? Are they "alive"?

Andrea L.K. Tembreull

What do you think?

[Kryptid]

From what I understand, viruses do not have any way of processing chemicals and energy themselves. They rely on the cells they infect for such matters. I'm pretty sure that viruses can't "starve" and that they can exist fairly indefinitely as long as some outside force doesn't destroy them (such as a white blood cell or caustic chemicals).

[khurrum]

yup..
i thnk so that thre is no metabolsm in viruses since they r only cmpsed of proten capsid and nuclear material in the forn of DNA or RNA  []
and anothr thng (m not sure about it...its my thnkng) since they use use host metabolic michnary for the formation of thre capsid and nuclear material so probably they don't have
.... []

[DrN]

Yes, metabolism is defined as the chemical reactions that occur in a living organism - catabolism (breaking down of organic matter) and anabolism (construction of cellular components). As has been said, viruses don't have the capability of doing any of these things by themselves, they are completely parasitic and rely on the host cell to do all this for them.

However, the fact that they require these processes to be carried out (by something!) in order for the virus to replicate, kind of implies that, by this definition, they are still living organsims, just living organisms who like to delegate a lot.