The Three KINDS

mimivirus bigger than some cells and has over 900 genesBBC NEWS | Health | 'World's largest virus' found
Mimivirus - Wikipedia

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Mimivirus possesses many characteristics which place it at the boundary of living and non-living. It is as large as several bacterial species, such as Rickettsia conorii and Tropheryma whipplei, possesses a genome of comparable size to several bacteria, including those above, and codes for products previously not thought to be encoded by viruses. In addition, mimivirus possesses genes coding for nucleotide and amino acid synthesis, which even some small obligate intracellular bacteria lack. This means that unlike these bacteria, mimivirus is not dependent on the host cell genome for coding the metabolic pathways for these products. They do however, lack genes for ribosomal proteins, making mimivirus dependent for protein translation and energy metabolism. These factors combined have thrown scientists into debate over whether mimivirus is a distinct form of life, comparable on a domain scale to Eukarya, Archaea and Bacteria. Nevertheless, mimivirus does not exhibit the following characteristics, all of which are part of many conventional definitions of life: homeostasis, response to stimuli, growth in the normal sense of the term (instead replicating via self-assembly of individual components) or undergoing cellular division.

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Gets down to the definition of life again.Enjoy.

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But it may also never be a cut and dried divide ... but a

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Enjoy.

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Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.