Spores are not technically living, even though most biologists would classify them as alive, because they retain the potential to revive. They can go back to living, so they’re not dead. I don’t see why we should view viruses in any different light: they too revert to copying themselves as soon as they are in the right environment. Likewise tardigrades. Life is about its structure (dictated in part by genes and evolution), but living – growing, proliferating – is as much about the environment, about how structure and environment interrelate. We know a tremendous amount about how genes encode
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