ReviewNature reviews. Microbiology2009
Ten reasons to exclude viruses from the tree of life.
Review in Nature reviews. Microbiology, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 136 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
136 citing papers in PubMed, 439 citations in OpenAlex.
- The social life of viruses: a queer sort of science.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2026Article
- The Emergence of Life in the Light of Evolution.ArXiv · 2026Article
- The dual-origin hypothesis of viruses under environmental stress and energy crisis.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2026Article
- Global biodiversity and the expanding Tree of Life.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Reassessing viral origins and evolutionary placement in the tree of life.Antonie van Leeuwenhoek · 2026Review
- Thousands-years-old deep-sea DNA viruses reveal the evolution of human pathogenic viruses.Journal of advanced research · 2026Article
- The past and future of known biodiversity: Rates, patterns, and projections of new species over time.Science advances · 2025Article
- Investigations into the Diversity and Distribution of tRNA and Phylogenetics of Translation Factors in Amoebozoa-InfectingViruses · 2025Article
- Challenges in Assembling the Dated Tree of Life.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- The polinton-like supergroup of viruses: evolution, molecular biology, and taxonomy.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2024Review
- Review
- Gene Transfer Among Viruses Substantially Contributes to Gene Gain of Giant Viruses.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Review
- Bidirectionally Regulating Viral and Cellular Ferroptosis with Metastable Iron Sulfide Against Influenza Virus.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2023Article
- Eighteen distinctive characteristics of life.Heliyon · 2023Article
- A critical analysis of the current state of virus taxonomy.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Review
- Cellular and Natural Viral Engineering in Cognition-Based Evolution.Communicative & integrative biology · 2023Review
- Article
- Article
- Current Opinion in LAIV: A Matter of Parent Virus Choice.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
76 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When viruses were discovered, they were accepted as missing links between the inert world and living organisms. However, this idea was soon abandoned as information about their molecular parasitic nature accumulated. Recently, the notion that viruses are living organisms that have had a role in the evolution of some essential features of cells has experienced a renaissance owing to the discovery of unusually large and complex viruses that possess typical cellular genes. Here, we contend that there is strong evidence against the notion that viruses are alive and represent ancient lineages of the tree of life.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.