Which best explains why viruses do not have special structures or enzymes that allow them to make their own food? Viruses can use energy in living cells that they infect. Viruses can replicate inside a host that they infect. Viruses can cause contagious illnesses in host cells. Viruses integrate their RNA or DNA into infected cells.

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Marlee Heath

Biology

6 November, 09:32

Which best explains why viruses do not have special structures or enzymes that allow them to make their own food? Viruses can use energy in living cells that they infect. Viruses can replicate inside a host that they infect. Viruses can cause contagious illnesses in host cells. Viruses integrate their RNA or DNA into infected cells.

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Bryan Mathis · Answer 1

The reason why viruses do not have special structures or enzymes that allows them to make their own food is viruses can use energy in living cells that they infect. Basically, viruses are on the borderline of living and dead. The only structures that they have is a nucleoprotein (protein wrapped up around DNA or RNA) which simply means that they are not a complete cell. They are inactive when they are outside a host's body therefore they do not need energy at that time. When they infect a host cell, only at that time they become active and make copies of themselves and in order to do that they use host's machinery like host's ATP (energy), organelles etc.