Alkaline environment

[605324529]

I read recently that no virus can survive in al alkaline environment. Is this true?

[Chem_Mod]

If it is highly alkaline, yes.

[KaleenaJezycki_1I]

Why is this??

[Alan Cornejo 1a]

Why is this??

I also wonder this, I've been researching and googling but there only the conclusions that nothing can survive in a highly alkaline environment, but nowhere it really explains how.

[Katie Phan 1K]

... is this why they said to drink bleach?

[Rohit Srinivas 2D]

This is peculiar because our bodies are slightly alkaline. Luckily we have a nice system of buffers, which we will probably learn the Henderson hasselbach equation for, which keep our bodies at a ph of 7.4.

[Marc Lubman 3B]

This is actually not all that surprising, because an extremely alkaline or extremely acidic environment isn't really habitable for any organisms due to the environment's reactivity. Like if you have a super alkaline environment, then any complex organic molecules will be broken down and react with the alkalinity. There are some organisms, particularly different types of Archaea, which are extremophiles that can live in super alkaline or super acidic environments (alkaliphiles and acidophiles), but once again there's a limit of reactivity past which no organism is likely to survive simply because the sensitive macromolecules that make them up will be broken down by aggressive reactive species.