Correct. Other than the ad infinitum part. There is, after all, a limit (so far) in that it has to be DNA or RNA that carries the code to make the molecular machines that reproduce the DNA or RNA code.
But a virophage is just.... wow.
A virus is about as striped down simple as anything that could possibly said to be alive could be. It is a protein package meant to dock with and inject DNA or RNA into a living cell, where that DNA or RNA codes for viral proteins and get replicated and they get assembled ‘Frankenstein's monster style’ and burst out to infect other living cells.
This thing gets inside another virus? Doesn't it at some point have to infect a living cell in order to copy itself?
When dyslexia attacks.
Jonathan SWIFT.