One of the things about life is that it lack the discreet boundaries of math.<p>There is no clear, sharp, crisp line in the sand between life and not life.<p>And it turns out the line between virii and bacteria is kind of messy too.<p>In fact that's not surprising, what would be surprising is finding a sharp and clear difference, now that would be unusual.<p>And another minor point, we know of divergent evolution for things as complex as large animals, like echidnas and hedgehogs. And that article talks about all virii sharing the proteins to make their capsule, and implies they all inherited it from a common ancestor. But isn't that an extraordinary claim? Isn't it just as likely for there to have been multiple origins and we're just looking at convergent evolution? For things that simple, how many ways to build a capsid could there be?