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Video of the lifecycle of HIV. To me it's absolutely mind-blowing to think that this entire process developed on its own, in dark, and is mindlessly progressin
by jcims 5y ago
Video of the lifecycle of HIV. To me it's absolutely mind-blowing to think that this entire process developed on its own, in dark, and is mindlessly progressing along so effectively that despite all of our technological capability we can barely contain it.
https://vimeo.com/260291607 https://vimeo.com/260291607
(also how awesome is the music?)
- jarpschop 5y agoNatural selection is a very powerful process.
- mbroncano 5y ago* given enough time
- pintxo 5y agowhen executed over millions of years
- whimsicalism 5y agoMuch shorter time frames than that are still powerful, especially for something like a virus.
- jcims 5y agoIn practice this is what we observe, but the combinatorics are so ridiculously large that its hard to understand how it works. A very small protein of say 200 amino acid residues has 21^200 configurations. If every atom in the universe was another universe, and every atom in those universes was a universe, you'd still need 10^20 grandpappy universes to represent each configuration as a distinct atom in the grandchild universe. Given that these configurations confer meaningful chemical and mechanical utility, sometimes with discontinuities in effect, it's really odd to me that it all somehow works.
- newbamboo 5y agoIf only we had a Project Warpspeed for AIDS.
- Scoundreller 5y agoMost in congress didn’t think they would be impacted by AIDS.
- jdavis703 5y agoAnd until Congress changed parties in 2021, most didn’t think they’d be impacted by COVID.
- Scoundreller 5y agoThat’s what they said, but I want to know their vaccination records.
- bluGill 5y agoMost won't be. HIV spreads by things that most in congress are unlikely to take part in. (sharing needles). While there are a lot of sex scandals in congress, the form of those activities is mostly low risk (low odds that the partner has HIV, and sex in a form that makes spread unlikely). Of course the above is about odds. Individual exceptions do not prove me wrong. That doesn't mean HIV isn't horrible. It also doesn't mean congress is right for the right reasons.
- Scoundreller 5y agoCongress depends on the blood supply more than average, but the risk to the blood supply was largely ignored because AIDS was supposed to be a homosexual/drug user disease in their minds.
- nieve 5y agoI was shocked to learn that Isaac Asimov died from complications of AIDS acquired via transfusion, but his doctors insisted on keeping it a secret from the public.
- SevenSigs 5y agoFor some reason, it reminds me of the passion flower: https://i.imgur.com/Efy2Iq4.png https://i.imgur.com/Efy2Iq4.png
- jeremycw 5y agoSometimes I find it a little depressing that (at least through my laymen eyes) we are nearing a technological plateau and that more research into physics is unlikely to get us to a world describe in traditional science fiction with FTL drives and large metal spaceships that can take you from planet to planet. Then something like this reminds me that if we as a species were able to unlock the secrets of bio-chemistry (not sure if that's the right term) it would be a game changer unlike any seen so far. And the fact that there is a huge corpus of evidence out there in the world called "life" proving some of the possibilities already gives me hope that while we may never have FTL, the future could still be pretty wild.
- kiba 5y agoSometimes I find it a little depressing that (at least through my laymen eyes) we are nearing a technological plateau and that more research into physics is unlikely to get us to a world describe in traditional science fiction with FTL drives and large metal spaceships that can take you from planet to planet. FTL drive is not needed; people think too small.
- dsign 5y agoThat's absolutely true, but I wonder what it will take to take that point home for everybody.
- ddingus 5y agoThe first big project. After that there will be movies explanations stories expectations all that stuff. And to some degree it's already out there. We have those things now related to travel that's not faster than light. And tell somebody put something together for real, FPL is just a whole lot more sexy.
- whimsicalism 5y agoDisagree that we are reaching a technical plateau at all. Maybe in some parts of particle and AMO physics, but cosmology continues to advance and we are continuing to learn a lot.
- jonplackett 5y agoIt makes you question the way we call animals / humans 'complex' life when you see how insanely intricate what happens on such a tiny scale even in something as small as a virus.
- pjc50 5y agoWe are then "more complex": we contain multitudes, some of which (gut bacteria, mitochondria, gametes) look like entirely separate life forms of their own.
- jonplackett 5y agoI guess we're many, many orders of magnitude more complex. I just think it's wrong to call tiny 'simple' life, just because we are so insanely complex.
- zamadatix 5y agoGood luck finding anything that still seems "simple" when you really look towards understanding how it works rather than what it results in. Simple and complex always have to be relative to other things as nothing is absolutely "simple" e.g. even a single atom is an extraordinarily complicated environment which spans many textbooks and degrees worth of interactions and understandings. To say everything is just complex to more super duper extra complex is to just replace the sound of "simple" with the sound of "complex" yet have it mean the exact same thing and use it in the exact same way.
- whimsicalism 5y ago? Animals contain millions of similarly complex processes within them, that is what makes them 'complex' compared to a simple virus.
- rlopezcc 5y agoTrigger warning: Trypophobia
- _trampeltier 5y agoGreat video! If you wonder, how we know things look like this, here is a talk about it: 34C3 - Free Electron Lasers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKqof77pKBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKqof77pKBc
- secondcoming 5y agoThat was awesome. What a great presenter. Thanks
- gonzo41 5y agoThat is a fantastic video. Also, omg biochemistry is just staggeringly amazing. Whilst that video is short, the information it contains is just staggering when you think of the years and years of research that's been done on that virus. Good luck to Moderna.
- hart_russell 5y agoThat video is just insane. The way the HIV virus completely hacks the T-cell to become a factory seems akin to a very complicated computer hack. It would be elegant if it weren't so deadly.
- cowboysauce 5y ago>and is mindlessly progressing along so effectively that despite all of our technological capability we can barely contain it. In theory we already have the technology to eliminate HIV. People taking PrEP have a >99% reduced chance to catch HIV. The drugs used to treat HIV can reduce viral levels in HIV+ people to the point that it's impossible for them to transmit it.
- callmeal 5y ago>To me it's absolutely mind-blowing to think that this entire process developed on its own, in dark, Richard Dawkins has a very good explanation for this in The Blind Watchmaker. >and is mindlessly progressing along so effectively that despite all of our technological capability we can barely contain it. There's technological capability and America's punishment fetish because people who get aids "deserve it". If we really wanted to, we would have had one.
- AlexanderTheGr8 5y agoI haven't read the book. Can you please summarize Richard Dawkins's explanation? I am quite curious how something this complex can be generated by nature.
- dynamite-ready 5y agoIs HIV uniquely sophisticated, or are there other viruses out in the wild like this?