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1982, the well-known physicist Capra of the University of California, Berkeley has declared: “Many types of organisms that were thought to represent well-defined biological species have turned out upon close examination to consist of two or more different species in intimate biological association. This phenomenon known as 'symbiosis' is so wide 'spread throughout the living world that it has to be considered a central aspect of life. Symbiotic relationships are mutually advantageous to the associated partners and they involve animals, plants and microorganisms in almost every imaginable combinations. Many of these may have formed their union in the distant past and evolved toward ever more inter-dependence and exquisite adaptation to one another. Viruses and bacteria frequently live in symbiosis with other organisms (the basic nature of viruses still remains intriguing). Outside living cells, a virus particle cannot be called a living organism, inside a cell it forms a living system together with the cell but one of a very special kind. It is self-organising but the purpose of its organisation is not the stability and survival of the entire virus-cell system. Its only aim is the production of new viruses that will then go on to form living systems of this peculiar kind in the environment provided by the cells, In the world of micro-organisms, viruses are among the most intriguing creatures existing on the borderline between living and non-living matter. Ilya Prigogine who obtained the Nobel Prize in Physical.chemistry a few years ago, speaks of dissipative chemicls structures who display the dynamics of self-orgnisation in its simplest form exhibiting most of the phenomen on characteristic of life-self-renewal, adaptation; evolution and even primitive form of 'mental processes'. These intriguing systems represent a link between animate and inanimate matter. Whether they are called living organisms or not is ultimately a matter of convention. At an even smaller scale symbiosis takes place within the cells of all higher organisms Most cells contain a number 'organelles' which perform specific functions and are organisms in their own right. The mitochondria' which are often called the storehouses of the cells contain their own genetic
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