Scientific writing 2

1. Do viruses show significant similarity to living cells? Are viruse functions

comparable to those of cells? Do viruses behave with a purpose?
2. We see the most reuse in eukaryotes, especially in homosapiens which
marks the highest notch in the graph. To me, this supports the reductionist
hypothesis that claims that viruses were once they're own type of cell and have
since lost most of their cellular capabilities. It would make sense that at some
point in acient time, viruses and cells coexisted. This would explain why viruses
are capable of performing some of the same protein folds that modern cells can.
3. The most interestin thing to me is how similar the folds in dsDNA virus
proteins are to the protein folds in transcription and DNA-related proteins. This
makes it seem like the architecture for virus and cell proteins have evolved from
the same common source. it further helps to prove that at some point in time
viruses may have played a much bigger role in life on earth.
4. Do viruses show similarity to living cells? Are virus functions comparable
to those of cells? Do viruses behave with a purpose?The research presented did
touch on my first two questions to an extent. They did give some explanation as
to how viruses and viral types relate to other species, both prokaryotiic and
eukaryotic. More significantly for me those, they did give some interesting
evidence to the link between virus and cell. By showing that viruses, espcially
dsDNA viruses, are able to produce the same protein shapes seen in cells, it ties
them together much more closely than I had thought. Personally, I think that one
day in the search for life outside of this planet a very good place to start would be
with proteins because they are so crucial to life. While they did not convince me
in this article that viruses today are alive, they did make me wonder about how
close to life viruses really are and whether they were truly ever alive.
5. In the reduction theory, it is believed that ancient proto-virocells lost their
ribosomal machinenery and were then "reduced" to modern viruses. Based on
what was presented, I would agree that this hypothesis suits the data best out of
the three major theories. Because of the close relation in fold families amoung
viruses and cells, it is not a wide stretch to assume that at one point viruses were
either cellular themselevs or a direct product from cells.
6. Do viruses show similarity to living cells? Are virus functions comparable
to those of cells? Do viruses behave with a purpose? The discussion again
brought some answers to my first two questions. Taking us back in time to
visualize the propsed viral ancestor, the researchers explained that these protovirocells may have been the last common ancestor of viruses and all current
living cells. This again brings a significant tie back to the similarity of viruses to
cells. In addition, the researchers also point out that while no single virus has yet
been discovered that possess all the capabilities of current cells, there are
several virus types/forms that possess bits and pieces of functionality that
common cells do. In this case, they brought us the examples of viral factories
that exhibit metabolic activity (kinda) and virions which are essentially virus

gametes. The points brought up in the discussion were more than enough to
answer some of my questions. That being said, the points the authors made did
make me reevalute my initial decision that virus are not alive, however, it still has
not convinced me that viruses are indeed alive now. Altogether though, this
article provides a lot of inforomation and really makes me wonder about the true
origins of viruses and how they relate to living cells.