I mean, viruses are not "live organism" because they need cells to can do any action according with current biology, but, humans are not nothing and cannot live without plants and abiotic elements, perhaps viruses are the bridge between basic atomic things and simple live organism and can be modifiers of complex organism.
Hi Luis, interesting question.
Set aside the question of "who came first", every animal genome is littered with latent or non-reproducing endogenous retrovirus DNA (ERVs).
ERVs are ~5% of our genome (a huge number!) and their transposon-like activities could explain the redundancies in our immune system and clotting factors and maybe even cause some cancers.
Additionally, ERVs firmly establish our relationship to the great apes.
Yes, the question is interesting, just another perspective to the origin of life, I think science must see any thing with many many perspectives to can understand some thing better, or at least to can answer questions.. thanks for read.
There is a recent study that found that some mimiviruses possess great parts of the translation machinery, except ribosomes.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03168-1
Regards,
Joachim
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