Viruses : Are there Male, Female Viruses?

[WWGD]

TL;DR Summary

Does Sex (M/F) apply to Viruses?

Hi,
Just curious; issue came up:

Are there Male, Female viruses? I don't know if they self-reproduce or if they're asexual ,or any other choice somewhere in between. My knowledge of Biology is at an intro Undergrad level, please.
TY.

 

[phinds]

viruses reproduce asexually. Google is your friend.

 

[WWGD]

viruses reproduce asexually. Google is your friend.

There is too much nonsense to filter out and I am far from an expert. I did a quick search and did not see anything definitive.

 

[berkeman]

There is too much nonsense to filter out and I am far from an expert. I did a quick search and did not see anything definitive.

Do virus particles replicate by joining up with other virus particles, or by joining up/using some other types of entities?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus

 

[BillTre]

There are not boy and girl viruses.
They might be able to form new genomes from two different viruses replicating in the same cell (or some other molecular trick).
However, any genetic exchanges would be between one virus and any other virus.
Not only with a virus of the opposite sex (the boy-girl model).

In any case, viral replication can happen just fine, without interacting, in any way, with another virus. Genetic exchange is not required.

Simpler cellular life forms often reproduce by dividing cells.
Viruses sneak into functioning cells and use them to make a lot of copies of infectious virus particles.

 

[WWGD]

Do virus particles replicate by joining up with other virus particles, or by joining up/using some other types of entities?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus

Thank you. Apologies, my knowledge if Biology is not deep. Hard to filter that way.

 

[Laroxe]

A virus is really little more than a set of instructions that take over the machinery of a cell in order to make the cell produce copies of itself. While some viruses require multiple virus particles to enter a cell in order to get a full instruction set to control reproduction, this isn't like sexual reproduction. Outside of a cell, It's difficult to even think of a virus as a form of life, let alone being gendered.
It's possible the gender of the host might affect the viruses reproduction.

 

[pinball1970]

Summary:: Does Sex (M/F) apply to Viruses?

Hi,
Just curious; issue came up:

Are there Male, Female viruses? I don't know if they self-reproduce or if they're asexual ,or any other choice somewhere in between. My knowledge of Biology is at an intro Undergrad level, please.
TY.

No. They infect particular cells, think of them as populations rather than individuals.

 

[Fervent Freyja]

Viruses are considered non-living particles by most. Incredibly, there still seems to be some debate about it.

I can say that viruses often produce different immune responses in the sexes. Exactly what isn’t precisely defined for most viruses, yet. We know for some types there are (like SARS-CoV-2) differences. We also sometimes have to change sensitivity in testing for pathogens depending upon the sex.

We could say that viruses have a sex, indirectly, if we see that they target one sex in a more concerning way than the other sex.

We have also found that some viral mutations can be gender driven. Like how 27964C > T-(S24L) on ORF8 in SARS-CoV-2 was found to be a female-dependent mutation, likely on account of the females more robust immune response. I would say that we could extrapolate this new information and say that other viruses may have gender-dependent mutations. It should at least be looked at in more depth (and probably is).

 

[BillTre]

Viruses are considered non-living particles by most. Incredibly, there still seems to be some debate about it.

I could easily (and like to) argue that viruses are either alive or not alive.
It depends on the definition of alive you use and the definition of what their relevant environment is.
A rough life definition I like is a chemical system able to sustain and replicate itself by using resources it can get from its environment.

If you consider a virus's environment the inside of a cell it is able to parasitize, then it seems to be alive.
If you don't think of the inside of a cell as its environment, then maybe not.

If you think a living thing requires a cell membrane, then a virus would not be alive.

 

[WWGD]

Thank you all. I knew the basics but not enough and thought maybe I didn't know what I may not know.

 

[Fervent Freyja]

I could easily (and like to) argue that viruses are either alive or not alive.
It depends on the definition of alive you use and the definition of what their relevant environment is.
A rough life definition I like is a chemical system able to sustain and replicate itself by using resources it can get from its environment.

If you consider a virus's environment the inside of a cell it is able to parasitize, then it seems to be alive.
If you don't think of the inside of a cell as its environment, then maybe not.

If you think a living thing requires a cell membrane, then a virus would not be alive.

I’ve wondered about definitions here. At first, I thought we could define living matter as a semi-open system that exchanges and moves around gases, but, no, most of the Earth qualifies there.

We have a lot of non-living molecules that sort of parasitize and replicate. DNA is a non-living molecule itself and we do not consider it alive. It’s conditional on the environment, just like with viral particles. Is it going to exchange information and create an action just lying on its own? Every self-assembling object is dependent upon its environment to act.

I would like to have a more precise definition, but we probably never will.

 

[WWGD]

I’ve wondered about definitions here. At first, I thought we could define living matter as a semi-open system that exchanges and moves around gases, but, no, most of the Earth qualifies there.

We have a lot of non-living molecules that sort of parasitize and replicate. DNA is a non-living molecule itself and we do not consider it alive. It’s conditional on the environment, just like with viral particles. Is it going to exchange information and create an action just lying on its own? Every self-assembling object is dependent upon its environment to act.

I would like to have a more precise definition, but we probably never will.

"Moves around gases". Are you spying on me? I had a big meal! ( kidding)

 

[Fervent Freyja]

"Moves around gases". Are you spying on me? I had a big meal! ( kidding)

HeHeHe

 

[collinsmark]

From my old gradeschool science class, and later in high school biology, per the definition of a living organism, an organism must:

• have a mechanism to reproduce (as in a typical example of a strain/species must be able to replicate or reproduce; it doesn't necessarily mean that each member of the strain/species must be able to reproduce, but merely that the strain/species has a means for reproduction),
• and it must also undergo respiration.

Viruses check the first box. It's that second box where viruses fall short.

While other organisms metabolize (break down) "food" to release energy, carrying out respiration, and thus grow or repair themselves, viruses don't do any of that. Once a virus is fully formed inside a host cell, it does pretty much nothing from then on, until it either gets destroyed or finds a opportunity to inject its genetic material into another host cell. And that's it.

You might argue that other living organisms (particularly small, single-celled micro-organisms) can remain dormant for very long periods of time if the conditions are right (very low temperatures, for example). Yes, this is true, but they do respire once the temperature warms up or the conditions change, making it respiration possible.

But viruses don't ever respire, ever. Sure, there is a mechanism for them to inject their genetic material into a host cell, but that's it. That's the only action they ever undertake. When not actively injecting their material into a host cell, they either exist in a state of doing absolutely nothing or they don't exist at all (e.g., get torn apart by their environment). They don't eat, they don't breath. Besides that one, singular act of injecting their material into a host cell, they don't do anything at all.

The fact that they don't undergo respiration is why viruses are generally not considered "alive."

 

[Rive]

Well, I hail from the fields of electronics ad while we have even less living material there than a virologist in his crystallized sample-collection, we sill have male and female pairs (connectors, for example). So based on the facts that sometimes just sex-like complementary existence may be enough for the classification, I've tried to look for fitting virus-virus interactions.

It seems so that virus-virus interactions do exists, so the idea may not be as invalid as it looks for the first try, but it would be a far stretch to match any listed category/example as male/female pair.

So, no luck.