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According to a student taking the AP Biology exam, he/she lost 10 points by choosing an answer that said viruses are living things and as a result, states that viruses are not living things :http://answers.Yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080926021144AAwdJ2h

According to MCAT training materials (MCAT is the test taken to get into med school) Viruses are no considered cells because, among other reasons, they cannot live independently. The MCAT materials say that there is a debate as to whether viruses are living things because of the nature of their life cycle (again - they cannot live independently). Other posts that I found on this topic by searching ask.com say that viruses are not living things because they fail to meet the 7 criteria of living things. Viruses are 20 - 300nm in size and prokaryotes are 1 - 10um. While viruses are smaller, many feel they manufacture rather than reproduce and therefore are not living things. MCAT training materials do not come out and say whether they are living or non-living but refer to them as parasitic, acellular, and incapable of living independently and note that there is debate as to whether they are living things.

Once can say truthfully, as another poster noted, viruses fail traditional, established criteria for 'life'. In this instance, I would say the smallest thing that meets the criteria for life is prokaryotes (bacteria). Debatable is whether or not established criteria for life need to be modified in order to accommodate the unique nature of viruses.

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