Eli5-If a virus isn’t technically alive, I would assume it doesn’t have instinct. Where does it get its instructions/drive to know to infect host cells and multiply?
In: 7067
Since RNA has existed, predating even single cellular organisms, there have been a flurry of all different kinds of RNA contained within many different ‘shells’. The RNA probably started as random and was driven purely by thermodynamic processes. I’m talking primordial viruses. They would, in some cases by chance, have the correct sequence of RNA that could hijack the cell’s system of copying and this quickly catapulted these random bits of RNA into what is now an ever-evolving cycle between these RNA bits that have been with us since the dawn of time and our immune systems fighting them off. Once it reaches the ability to hijack our cells instruction code – all that really has to happen is the cell thinks the RNA is its own DNA and begins spending resources copying that instead of important and crucial proteins and such. With the death of the cell these copies drift out into the world like landmines for the next cell to come across and be infected. Viruses are as old as life. Perhaps older.
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