Certified Healthcare Safety Professional (CHSP) Practice Exam

What must viruses do to reproduce?

1. Reproduce independently

2. Invade living cells

3. Absorb nutrients from their environment

4. Form colonies in water

The correct answer is: Invade living cells

Viruses cannot reproduce independently because they lack the necessary cellular machinery to do so. Instead, they must invade living cells to replicate. When a virus enters a host cell, it hijacks the cell's mechanisms, using the host's resources to produce new viral particles. The virus attaches to the cell, injects its genetic material, and integrates it into the host's cellular processes, which subsequently leads to the assembly of new viral components and their release into the environment to infect additional cells. The other options describe processes that are not applicable to viruses. For instance, viruses do not absorb nutrients from their environment like living organisms do, nor do they have a biological life cycle that involves forming colonies in water. Instead, their entire lifecycle depends on interacting with host cells to propagate. This reliance on living cells is a fundamental characteristic that distinguishes viruses from other forms of life.