Viruses: A Very Short Introduction

“Viruses are just a piece of genetic material inside a protein shell. So they’re obligate parasites. They can’t exist on their own. Whether or not they are alive is a moot point: it’s something that I’ve argued both for and against in my own books, because it’s an interesting question not only scientifically, but also philosophically. You have to start by asking: what do we call ‘alive’? I would come down on the side of no, they are not living. After all, they don’t metabolise, so they can’t generate energy or make proteins; in fact they can’t do anything on their own. That piece of genetic material has to get inside a living cell – then it hijacks all the mechanisms of the living cell to produce its own offspring.” Read more...

The best books on Viruses

Dorothy H. Crawford, Medical Scientist