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No fancy technology is required. Long before that, we created the dog and the apple. The USSR even recreated the wolf-to-dog transition with foxes. Doing someth
by burfog 6y ago
No fancy technology is required. Long before that, we created the dog and the apple. The USSR even recreated the wolf-to-dog transition with foxes. Doing something similar with viruses is much easier because the generations are shorter and because exposure to UV is easy.
- fastaguy88 6y agoYes, we know how to breed animals and plants. But do we know how to breed flu viruses? Animals and plants are outbred, and provide great genetic diversity for selecting desired traits. But these viruses were virtually identical (no diversity), and it is completely unclear how one would "select" for a virus with the desired properties.
- burfog 6y agoWe created the live polio vaccine by breeding. That was long before fancy genetic technology. Flu viruses are particularly easy to breed. Viruses have short generation times and easy vulnerability to genetic damage. Flu viruses even have a genome that isn't in one chunk, sort of like having chromosomes, making them extra easy to breed. Selection is a simple matter of having it reproduce quickly in the desired cells.
- fastaguy88 6y agoAll this is true, but does not explain how to breed a flu virus with the appropriate disease causing attributes while keeping it virtually (>97%) identical.