A few billion years ago, a cosmic explosion of catastrophic levels gave birth to a mass of round-shaped stardust. This mass, that would eventually come to be known as planet Earth went through a series of massive changes – of criss-cross mutations, of directionless evolution, of chemical bonding and cycles of creation and devastation. As assertively grandiloquent as it sounds, this planet Earth decided billions of years ago to be home to a rather obscene phenomenon, that of creation of one-celled microorganisms. The one-celled organisms eventually witnessed the bearing of its own kin, when that one-celled organism went through cell division, becoming two, and kick-starting a process of tremendous repulsion and convulsion, aided by the currents of evolution and drawn in by a mysterious reckoning, multicellular life forms were born. This same mysterious reckoning also caused some of these to decay and perish, while others strived strong. This led to a series of battles, a battle for survival that lasted a few million years. The landscape of Earth had begun to shift, the tectonic plate of mass that was surrounded by an ocean larger than life had begun to break. This break brought with it divided landmasses, each giving life to multicellular strains of unique properties each time. The multicellular life forms took shapes and forms, evolved into greeneries and into bacteria in the oceans. These further went ahead to jump from the ocean into the ground. The mysterious force again interfered, helping the life forms by giving them a specific set of mutations that gave birth to what is known as limbs. The life forms now used these limbs to climb up the sandy shores of ocean and seas, right through the forest of green. This minuscule event was where it all began, as life started to bloom. And that is the history of life's earliest ventures of survival on Earth, a history that should not include charades on the event known as a virus, for a virus can neither be dead nor living. From SARS, HIV, SWINE FLU, EBOLA to COVID-19, humankind has seen more than 2000+ virus species' though it is estimated that only 10% of these can and have affected human cells.
To understand the history of life feels rather demeaning to that of viruses, for they are not technically 'alive'. They are but clusters of elemental essence – of protein-nucleic acid, lipid, and carbohydrates. One may argue that all these comprise what is currently defined as 'living', and are an inherent part of life. But to understand and define a virus, we must know that a virus, although being a composite of components that otherwise make life, is not 'Alive' without a living cell. The virus requires cells to divide, and the cell is the basic unit of life. And hence the debate can continue for a larger while, never ever effortlessly arriving on a concrete solution. Perhaps the virus is the greatest we can get, to a quantum superposition between life and death – a state of neither being nor of not being. If asked to a person belonging to a pre-corona age in the pre-corona world, they would relate viruses with sickness and death and all the grotesque things imaginable. Despite this stupid yet justified generalization, the scientific community continues to venture out on the voyages of discovery in hopes of refining the way they understand viruses. Viruses are neither necessarily germs, nor are they necessarily bacteria. Though any germ, pathogen, bacteria can contain viruses as it is a basic structure of elemental sources of the earth – that of protein, lipid, nucleic acid, etc.
The school of biology had always considered that classifications of any life form must be done at the expense of the use of its species name. Viruses, however, until 1932 were not made to fit in the Ernst Mayr's reproductive concept of species and thus were averse to being classified in the same. By now the obvious questioned arrives as to why do we use terms such as Covid-19 strain of family Corona Virus – why exactly do we go to lengths of giving the viruses a family and a heritage. It's because in and after 1982, an effort was made by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) to redefine species as a cluster of strains that uniquely define itself. Only after 1991, the rationalization that a virus species can be understood as a polythetic group of viruses with shared lineage and properties was dawned upon. And hence the categorization of families of viruses. It seems that humans have adopted a keen sense of fondness towards viruses. Viruses are now defined by many institutional organizations, both governmental and non-governmental internationally and nationally. But the most fundamentally accepted ones are by ICTV which uses taxonomy to distribute and define boundaries of one virus species to another. Viruses can also be classified on the basis of their type and origin. For example – RNA Based viruses, DNA based viruses, etc. In 2013, ICTV gave a definition of species being – a monophyletic group of viruses whose characteristics can be differentiated from other species via multiple criteria. In essence, we all are, by that sense, made of viruses – of elemental essence, of protein and carbohydrate, and a plethora of other elements, all that were born because of the collision between the cosmic masses and the stardust and gases that they left off afterward. In a crude sense, we are almost born out of the death of another life – of a star. Hence the cycle of life and death is so much more vivid on Planet Earth.
The author can be reached at @rhythamdasmanyo@gmail.com
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