Where did viruses come from?

Answer 1

No one knows for certain, and there is much scientific debate on this issue. Some scientists have speculated that they might have been parts of parasitic organisms that got separated from the machinery for producing the rest of the cell and still managed to infect their hosts, their RNA/DNA being incorporated into the host cell and then being replicated by the host cell's own machinery.

Answer 2

None. Viruses are not classifiable in the kingdom system. Even in the scientific community, people are unsure whether virus belongs specifically to living, or specifically to nonliving. It's generally agreed that they lie somewhere in between life and complex molecules. While they exhibit some behaviors of a living organism, those characteristics are very limited.

Answer 3

Viruses were identified as non-bacterial toxic agents by many researchers beginning with Louis Pasteur in the 1870's, Charles Chamberland in 1884, and Dimitri Ivanovsky in 1892. Viruses were different because they could penetrate filters that stopped bacteria. Martinus Beijerinck defined the virus as a nucleotide particle rather than a fluid in 1898. It was not until 1935 that Wendell Stanley was able to crystallize viral particles, and they were imaged for the first time using an electron microscope in 1939.

Answer 4

A man once noticed that people who worked closely with cows got cowpox, but didn't get smallpox, and on the rare occasion that they did, they got a milder form than those people who hadn't had cowpox. This led him to believe that the two were related. He got cowpox extracts and voila, the first vaccine was thus created. Smallpox was the first infectious disease to be eradicated.

Answer 5

Hello there!

The first virus discovered was the tobacco mosaic virus or TMV.

Have a good day! 😊