Observatoire des droits humains (anglais seulement)

How viruses blur the boundaries of life

(Version anglaise seulement)

par Heshmat Borhani, Lecturer in Bioinformatics, University of Nottingham

When people talk about the coronavirus, they sometimes describe this invisible entity as if it has a personality and even a conscience. If you ask a biology or medical student what a virus is, they will tell you that a virus is not a living organism, or at most that it exists at the border between living and dead – a kind of walking dead.

For biologists who specialise in virology, however, this view is not clear-cut. Scientists still disagree on whether viruses are truly alive or not.

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