There are 5 kingdoms; Kingdom Animalia, Kingdom Plantae, Kingdom Fungi, Kingdom Minera, and Kingdom Protistae. Why isn’t there another one for viruses, since they fit in neither of these kingdoms, due to the lack of DNA?

  • @AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    They didn’t evolve from the Last Universal Common Ancestor the same way living organisms did. I think the current theory (or one of them) is that they were mechanisms for horizontal gene transfer that ran amok.