In what way is a virus remotely like a prion? Both the structure and function of the parts are completely different.
Just because a virus interacts with a metabolism doesn't mean it's closer to having one of its own. That's like saying humans use gasoline combustion for our biology because we drive cars instead of walking sometimes.
You're not wrong that whether viruses are alive is not a very practical question, but none of the rest of your post meaningfully addresses it either way.
A viral capsid is certainly an evolutionary benefit, but the disease known as "scrapie" astonishingly seems to be able to survive without one for long durations.
We are quite lucky that nothing like that targets humans so effectively.
Yeah, because scrapie doesn't resemble a virus, so it doesn't have the same survival concerns. A protein in an exceptionally low-energy conformation is more robust than a ring of RNA, film at 11.
Anyway, fun fact, the prion that causes scrapie is extremely similar to the ones that cause mad cow disease (transmissible to humans) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (human disease). So yes, we're very, very lucky, so far. Sleep tight.
>That's like saying humans use gasoline combustion for our biology because we drive cars instead of walking sometimes.
I imagine you are speaking more in terms of molecular biology, but if we zoom out into evolutionary biology this is not such an unreasonable statement if we are talking in terms of the extended phenotype.
Especially as we get closer to a robust hypothesis that humans lack free will on a biochemical level, it really could be that our genes making use of gasoline, because the "we" that we like to think of as making use of it through intellect and choice is more a hallucination (perhaps useful in some way, perhaps mere side effect) than a biological reality.
Humans using petroleum isn't necessarily all that different from how a parasite modifies host behavior as an essential part of its lifecycle, or how a beaver builds a dam to have a much more survivable environment.
Just because a virus interacts with a metabolism doesn't mean it's closer to having one of its own. That's like saying humans use gasoline combustion for our biology because we drive cars instead of walking sometimes.
You're not wrong that whether viruses are alive is not a very practical question, but none of the rest of your post meaningfully addresses it either way.