i <3 biology!

[Guest misscasey]

hi guys..my name is casey-and im new here, i was reading some stuff around, and you guys really knwo your stuff!!! i am currently enrolled in Honors Biology, and i am a sophomore at my high school.

 

we have a project due on tuesday on two books Hot Zone and Cobra Event...im sure you guys have read them...they are pretty good books, especially that Hot Zone.

 

This project is huge, and has 18 different parts. I was wondering you guys could help me with a couple that i am stuck on..

 

1. "Are Viruses alive" Include a discussion of the characteristics of life, organic and inorganic matter, and those characteristics that both living and non living share...

 

2. make a time line of all significant events in the book, as well as a time life of the disease process and how it was spread.

 

^i dont konw if maybe someone has read the book, or knows a site where i can find that...

 

3. What happens to a human infected with brainpox. Describe the final seizure in detail.

 

4. The brainpox is a combination of three different viruses. Describe each and why it was used for the weapon?

 

5. should we keep smallpox and other pathogens that are no longer found in nature, in storage vaults?

 

 

 

you guys would save my life!! if you could help!!! thank you!!

[mezarashi]

Hmmm, well I'm not biology major in college, but I guess I did enjoy watching the X-Files and seeing how parasitic fungus can take control of the host, make it go insane and finally burst out of the hosts' chest. Back to the topic ... let's see:

 

1. about viruses and whether they are considered organisms. If i remember from my 5th grade science class, organisms are defined by being able to independently reproduce. Viruses (or virii some like to refer as) are not capable of that. They are simply like specially encapsulated DNA that will penetrate a certain host cell and make the cell eventually self-destruct itself, in the process creating more of it kind (the virus), which will in turn do the same thing to its preprogrammed victim cell type. A virus does not grow or change, so I say no.

 

2-4. I havent read those books so I don't have a clue. I don't believe that brainpox is something generally known to the public? A kind of virus under laboratory analysis or such?

 

5. I think this question is more of a question of your opinion. It's like knowing you have a very dangerous animal. Say a vicious invisible species that will kill you just with the touch of it's spit. After much hardship, mankind has finally killed off its kind and tamed the very last of its kind. Should we extinguish its species forever, or keep it for the sake of science and completeness of documenting the species that have once lived the Earth.... now you decide.

 

And goodluck on that project, while I continue on my quest to quench my boredom...

[Guest misscasey]

thank you so much, that does help, especially for number 5..because i had no idea what it was saying!

 

xoxo <3

[Dak]

nice answres.

 

just like to ad that, aswell as being considered non-living due to their incapacity to self-replicate, viruses are also considered non-living due to the fact that they are metabolically inactive, ie outside of a cell they do not metabolise, and inside a cell the metabolism is carried out by the host cell, not the virus.