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Also to the other person in the replies. Viruses are biological, but not alive. If you cannot replicate or metabolize on your own, you are, by definition, not alive.

To say viruses are a remnant of LUCA is a bit misleading; a more accurate remnant would be deep-branched lineages of bacteria and archaea. They're usually simple hyperthermophiles that live in extreme temperatures (i.e. ocean thermal vents)

other tiny microbes and other biological molecules. LUCA had advantageous traits: a lipid bilayer cell membrane, DNA, and ribosomes for transcription and translation. Even K and Na ion pumps to regulate osmotic pressure.

My thoughts on this as someone working to get their microbiology degree: The consensus at the moment is that simple viruses did predate LUCA. An important thing to note is that LUCA wasn't the only microbe at the time, it was in an ecosystem at a vent in the ocean with many

and bacterial cell walls are made of murein... while archaea cell walls are made up of 'pseudomurein' 😭😭

So there's Bacteria and Archaea right? But because Archaea weren't discovered until the 80s... a lot of them still have the -bacterium suffix.... they're literally larping as bacteria

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