Can you create a biological virus

Despite their potential to kill, these potent pathogens are in fact considered to be non-living, as alive as the screen that you are reading this article on. How is this possible? How can something as nasty as a virus spread so fast, reproduce, and infect other living things, but not be considered a living creature?

The answer has been a subject of debate since the moment viruses were first named in There is no single undisputed definition of life. Does it multiply through cellular division? Does it have a metabolism? Read more: What came first, cells or viruses? Smith, H. Generating a synthetic genome by whole genome assembly: PhiX bacteriophage from synthetic oligonucleotides. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , in the press, Download references.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Reprints and Permissions. Pearson, H. Virus built from scratch in two weeks. Nature Download citation. Published : 14 November Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. New Scientist reports that people are known to have caught the bird flu and died. But at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, virologist Ron Fouchier has created an Avian flu that, unlike other H5N1 strains, easily spreads between ferrets—which have so far proven a reliable model for determining transmissibility in humans.

Are you scared yet? You have reason to be. Now Fouchier hopes to publish the results of experiments—first announced in September at a meeting of flu researchers in Malta—that many scientists believe should never have been done in the first place. He and Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin who is reportedly seeking to publish a similar study, have long pursued this line of research, hoping to determine whether H5N1 has the potential to become infectious in people, a jump that could trigger a worldwide pandemic.

Articles Videos. This won't be the last pandemic. Where will the next one come from? Viruses meet their mismatch Animal DNA is full of viral invaders and now we've caught them at it Should deadly viruses be used to treat cystic fibrosis? Fatal flaw.

Bruce Whitelaw: Should we gene edit farm animals?