Question

In the mid-1930s, the successful crystallization of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) ignited a fierce theoretical schism regarding the fundamental nature of viruses. A prominent faction of structural biochemists seized upon the crystallization as definitive proof that viruses were merely complex, non-living macromolecules. They argued that because TMV could be precipitated out of solution into inert, geometrically regular crystals—a property then associated exclusively with pure chemicals—it lacked the irreducible metabolic autonomy required to be classified as life. To these biochemists, viral replication was not biological reproduction but rather an autocatalytic process; they theorized that the host cell's own enzymatic machinery, erroneously triggered by the inert viral template, was entirely responsible for assembling new viral particles. In stark contrast, a camp of evolutionary pathologists contended that the virus's demonstrated capacity for genetic mutation and strain adaptation over time was an exclusive hallmark of biological organisms. These pathologists posited that viruses were highly degenerate descendants of parasitic bacteria that had evolutionarily shed their independent metabolic functions, retaining only the minimal genetic instructions necessary to hijack a host.

Based on the passage, the structural biochemists would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements concerning viruses and their properties? Select all that apply.