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
You know 3D printers right? They take a 3D computer file, called an STL (we’ll call it a blueprint), and based on the instructions in that code, create a plastic object of any shape.
Your cells contain DNA, and the job of DNA is to be a blueprint. Then, ribosomes are the 3D printers which can build proteins to do anything.
Imagine you took a 3D printer, and you uploaded a blueprint for… A blueprint maker. You can see the problem – the blueprint maker would make more blueprints for more blueprint makers. Your cells end up making so many blueprints, and blueprint makers, that they overload. The cell literally gets full of blueprints until it physically pops.
That’s what a virus is. It’s a special strand of DNA that just so happens that when your cell reads that DNA, it ends up making more of itself. It doesn’t think, it doesn’t have goals, or instincts, it’s literally just a strand of DNA where the proteins it makes lead to more DNA of the same type being made.
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