Ten Reasons to Exclude Viruses from the Tree of Life

Overview

Journal Nat Rev Microbiol

Specialties Infectious Diseases
Microbiology

Date 2009 Mar 10

PMID 19270719

Citations 128

Authors

David Moreira

Purificacion Lopez-Garcia

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

When viruses were discovered, they were accepted as missing links between the inert world and living organisms. However, this idea was soon abandoned as information about their molecular parasitic nature accumulated. Recently, the notion that viruses are living organisms that have had a role in the evolution of some essential features of cells has experienced a renaissance owing to the discovery of unusually large and complex viruses that possess typical cellular genes. Here, we contend that there is strong evidence against the notion that viruses are alive and represent ancient lineages of the tree of life.

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