Question

Do viruses go through senescence?

Answer 1

:) no. senescence is a phenomenon only observed in multiellular organisms. viruses don't "age" - they don't even have a metabolism!

but, i have an additional word on senescence, while I'm at it. it can be initiated by a number of processes, including:

- telomer shortening over a certain threshold
- outside factors like temperature or dryness (important for plants).

now, the cells don't just die, but shut down in a highly regulated process, yielding all important things (like magnesium, in plants) to the organism it belongs to. thus, minimal damage is done to the rest of the organism - unlike apoptosis.