Viruses and bacteria have survived on Earth for billions of years. But the time has not yet come to say in one sentence which of them came first. Why am I saying that? But before that, we need to know a little bit about viruses and bacteria.
Bacteria in water bottles
Viruses are tiny organisms. It cannot be classified as a microorganism. It cannot be said to be an inanimate object. It is an entity between living and inanimate. These microscopic organisms have to rely on other animal cells to reproduce. Cannot reproduce by itself. It reproduces inside the living cells of other organisms. Viruses can also attack bacteria including plants and animals. Viruses can be found wherever life exists on Earth.
In 1898, Dutch scientist Martinus Beijerink first discovered the tobacco mosaic virus. Since then, scientists have discovered about 11,000 species of viruses. Researched and found out various aspects including their structure and nature. But still scientists are not clear about the origin of the virus.
Bacteria are also a type of single-celled microorganism. In 1675 Dutch scientist Antony von Leeuwenhoek first observed bacteria in rainwater. These tiny microorganisms can be spherical, rod-shaped or spiral-shaped. Bacteria are among the life forms that appeared at the beginning of the world.
The question is, which of these two appeared first in the world? Karthik Anantaraman, a computational biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, answered this question. He says, 'Organic molecules evolved from a kind of primitive soup-like stuff. They were essentially the precursors of RNA and DNA. The carbon-containing molecules are then organized by assembling themselves. However, there is no way to say for sure whether they were viruses or bacteria.'
Scientists cannot answer this question clearly because these tiny parasites were born about 4 billion years ago. Bacteria are unicellular organisms. They can reproduce directly. can exist independently. Scientists have found fossils of bacteria about 350 million years old on earth. But research suggests that the first living cells arose about 4.2 billion years ago. So whether the first living cell was bacteria or not, it cannot be said with emphasis.
Viruses on the other hand are destroyed faster than bacteria. So they have no physical fossils. I have already said the reason. They behave like inanimate matter without a host body. They cannot be replicated unless they are infected in a cell. Therefore, their fossils are not found in the free environment. Genetic sequencing is possible. However, it doesn't help much. Because they change very quickly. All in all, it is now almost impossible to figure out when the virus originated. In the future, if the technology improves or a new method is discovered, the answers to these questions may be found.
So, before the virus or before the bacteria - what was the answer to the question? Readers may not be happy with such an answer. But it is not easy to guess an event that happened 4 billion years ago. So it is not yet time to directly say, virus first or bacteria first. The question remains as paradoxical as the chicken or the egg.
