Answer:
The most appropriate answer would be A. The particle is a virus because it does not use energy and cannot reproduce by itself.
Virus is defined as a small infectious agent that carry its own genetic material (DNA or RNA) but divides only in the living cells of other organisms (bacteria, human, animals, plants etc).
They are acellular in nature and thus are not able to reproduce on their own. They use the metabolism and machinery of the host cell in order to produce and assemble multiple copies of themselves in a cell.
They attach to the specific binding site of their target cells and inject their genetic material into the cell. The host cell's machinery is then used to replicate, transcribe and translate viral genetic material.
The viral genome produced are assembled in the protein cascade. They are then released by causing bursting of the infected cell.
