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The virus isn't the lifeform. The virus is just one component needed for the lifeform to exist and reproduce. The lifeform is the infection.
by undersuit 7y ago
The virus isn't the lifeform. The virus is just one component needed for the lifeform to exist and reproduce. The lifeform is the infection.
- pas 7y agoSo the lifeform is the disease? I think assigning "lifeform" status to an illness is not really helpful. Viruses are just replicators. Grey/Green/Brown/Bio goo. They are just dumb machines made by brute-forcing (fuzzing) more complex machines' immune systems. Viruses might be a different branch on the RNA-replicator tree. Probably when the first replicators started some found - again via brute-forced mutations - that there are some replicators that they can take advantage of to replicate themselves. And it just seems that closing this security hole is neigh impossible as long as we don't start to seriously tinker with that low level of "life" (eg. cellular machinery, transport, nucleus, messenger and transcription security).
- undersuit 7y ago> They are just dumb machines made by brute-forcing (fuzzing) But that's no different how the rest of biology works. A parasite like Giardia is relatively just a dumb machine brute forcing itself through my immune system.
- filleduchaos 7y agoI think you are narrowing on one phrase and ignoring all of the context around it, which is generally not very conducive to understanding a speaker's point.
- pas 7y agoNo, no, of course not. You're right. The same exploitation of complexity-difference can be observed all the way up the hierarchy. But that doesn't make it "living". (Or if you define liveness on a spectrum, like we sort of do with sentience/consciousness, then viruses are alive like rust is conscious.) It's very likely an invariant of complexity. Trade offs (and friendly turtles) all the way. And of course evolution doesn't optimize for QALY at all. So it's not surprising that it hasn't really spent much resources on closing the gap. And now we try to do it because we do find it a better goal than "just" thriving in every imaginable niche on whatever complexity it's possible. (We want to maintain our complexity plus occupy more niches.)
- akiselev 7y ago> Viruses might be a different branch on the RNA-replicator tree. Probably when the first replicators started some found - again via brute-forced mutations - that there are some replicators that they can take advantage of to replicate themselves. One of the dominant theories for how eukaryotic organisms evolved (and by extension multicellular life) is by incorporating viruses and other prokaryotes internally and there's evidence a variety of viruses permanently entered the gene pool of several animals that were theoretically naturally selected for. It's less a branch and more a mobius rat's nest.
- mratsim 7y agointeresting point of view
- undersuit 7y agoI think I came around to that way of thinking after reading about multi-part viruses: https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/newly-discovered-virus-has-multi-part-genome-32970 https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/newly-discovered-...
- twic 7y agoSee also adeno-associated viruses, which can only replicate in a cell which has been infected by another virus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adeno-associated_virus#Infection_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adeno-associated_virus#Infecti...
- Paul-ish 7y agoPhysically, what constitutes the infection?
- undersuit 7y agoThe viral RNA, whatever the viral RNA is producing, and whatever components of the cell are directly working on the new viruses. There are intracellular parasites, a viral infection is just an intracellular parasite... that doesn't have a definite boundary like a cell membrane.