Biology is the study of living things and all living things are on the tree of life.
Viruses are not on the tree of life because they are not alive (I realize this is debatable). So are viruses the only non-living entity studied in biology, the field of living things?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
In: 1
Prions are also non-living things studied by biology. They are misfolded proteins that attach to other proteins and misfold them in the same way.
There is also some debate as to whether or not a virus is alive. The main argument against it is that it can’t reproduce with its own machinery, but has to hijack a cell to make more of itself, where as bacteria have all the parts they need to make more of themselves.
The easy answer is “Why would we make a whole new branch of science just for prions and viruses?” Because the interactions that take place with viruses in prions use mechanisms that biologists already study, and a chemist would need to learn a whole lot of biology to understand what’s going on in the same way.
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