Are Viruses Alive?: Mind-Altering Stories about Life and Evolution

What, exactly, is life?

As young children we are taught about animals such as giraffes, lions, elephants and itsy-bitsy spiders with eight legs; we learn about trees and flowers from the plant kingdom, about toadstools in the woods and fish in the sea. This teaches us to think of living things as discrete entities with characteristic distinguishing features. Later, in school, we find out that all organisms are made up of cells, and that they evolve by natural selection. This trains us to consider nature as being full of distinct, multicellular creatures that adapt to their surroundings. But this is actually a very simplistic view of what life is all about.

Embarking on a journey to explore the true diversity of life from ten radical perspectives, we discover that parasites are the most common type of organism, that we might all be descended from viruses, and that a single genetic mutation can have devastating consequences.

What does masculinity mean, scientifically speaking? How do bacteria dominate our lives? Do individual fungi exist? In what ways is genealogy really about genes and not people? And why can't whales evolve gills? Join Noga Wies on a fascinating quest to uncover the essence of life itself.

Noga Wies is a lecturer and science writer and editor. She holds a BSc in biology and an MSc in biomedical science and microbiology.