How is virus different from a living thing?

Answer 1

Viruses must reproduce using a living cell. It has to "borrow" the living cell's parts so that it can make more of itself.

Answer 2

Hello there!

Viruses are quite different from all living things, including us.

Here are some differences:

1. They lack many essential organelles to work independently, like the Golgi apparatus, endoplasmic reticulum, ribosomes, etc.
2. Lacks a well-defined nucleus such as a double membrane, nuclear pore complexes and nucleosomes
3. They can't survive on their own, hence the requirement of a suitable host is compulsory, i.e., being an obligate intracellular parasite
4. They have the most diverse genomes (7 in total according to the Baltimore classification) from single-stranded DNA and double-stranded RNA to circular genomes and segmented genomes
5. They don't need to have a lipid bilayer to contain their genome, instead, they can have a rigid protein capsid
6. They are the only ones to infect every single organism in this world, even bacteria

That's all I can remember so far as these are the important differences.

Thank you for the question! 😄