4 ms·

That’s sneaky. Ironically more like a computer virus than the classical viruses. Taking over the host and modifying its boot partition so that it permanently ge

That’s sneaky. Ironically more like a computer virus than the classical viruses. Taking over the host and modifying its boot partition so that it permanently gets produced by the system.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago
There's basically no such thing as a boot partition. The machine of life has been turned on since the beginning. At this point, with all of the changes since the beginning, it's not obvious that there's a "boot partition" left that could reactivate life should it shut off. All cellular progeny is made with already functional and switched on proteins and RNA. The best you get to shutting off (without permanent cell death) would be the computer equivalent of hibernation. All the proteins and RNA are still there just waiting for the signal to activate again.
- jamiek88 4y ago
  Crazy to think we are all here because of that first multi cellular organism splitting over and over and over. Life doesn’t reboot as you say, it is split off from other organisms whether seed, sperm, rhizome or any other method it’s just cells dividing and spitting off other cells. Mind boggling to me.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    Yeah. I've known this for years but it really struck me when I typed it out here.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    The idea that we all branched from a single ancestral organism has never sat well with me. Whatever started that process, however improbable... Well the universe allowed it to happen. Why expect that the universe wouldn't subsequently continue to let it happen, again and again?
    - Izkata 4y ago
      My understanding is this is what happened during the Cambrian explosion.
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      Sure, but it would be a completely different tree of life, from a different origin. It's possible our origin was from a community of ancestral organisms, but at some point all terrestrial life that we have discovered so far intermixed enough to create an effective universal common ancestor that we all appear to branch from.
    - Tagbert 4y ago
      Because, once it happens in an environment, there is no more room for an alternate life form to arise. A new instance of life would have to compete against the established line and it is unlikely to survive that process.
    - samus 4y ago
      Life arising many times in parallel ought to have given rise to multiple trees of life with mutually incompatible biochemistry. Yet, overall life speaks about the same genetic language, and most things work very similar to each other. Life could still have indeed arisen multiple times, however, it probably either merged or got supplanted by its competitors. Life is simply too pervasive to allow for anything else. It would also immediately out-compete any newly arising life. There is some evidence that things like the genetic code, the choice of RNA/DNA nucleotides, and the set of the 20 aminoacids aren't really random. That would not rule out life arising multiple times, but the likelihood that it merged with other lineages would be even higher. Short summary: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/why-these-amino-acids-anyway https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/why-these-amino-ac... . A more in-depth paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378111900004765?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03781...
      - akiselev 4y ago
        There are a lot of microbes that are unculturable to this day and to my knowledge, no one has really done a proper investigation to see if the universal metabolic molecules like, for example, the hydrogen carriers NAD+/NADP+/NADPH, are truly universal. If we're going to see evidence of multiple trees of life, it'd be in those little details because most of the food chain has to interact with each other. Or fungi and other decomposers can bridge the gap. I think over the span of billions of years, evolution tends to converge too much for the trees to remain very distinct from each other.
  - jwestbury 4y ago
    So we're all just orphans from a long-dead init process? :(
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      And there's a problem with using a computer analogy. We are survivors(!) from a long-dead process. And have become far more than that process could have ever imagined, if it could have imagined. We are Tron!
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >The best you get to shutting off (without permanent cell death) would be the computer equivalent of hibernation. All the proteins and RNA are still there just waiting for the signal to activate again. Fungal spores[0][1] come to mind. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore#Fungi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore#Fungi [1] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/37268/can-mushroom-spores-survive-the-vacuum-and-radiation-of-space https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/37268/can-mushroom...
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    Tunned tardigrades are even better! https://www.livescience.com/58309-how-tardigrades-survive-drying.html https://www.livescience.com/58309-how-tardigrades-survive-dr...
marcosdumay 4y ago
It was well known that a lot of our genome got inserted there by virus. I think the news this article is reporting is that the defense mechanism is the explanation for that weird behavior.
akavi 4y ago
I'd say more like a classical virus with a loop earlier in the central dogma. Ie, in the DNA => RNA => Protein cycle, viruses are a loop from Protein => DNA or Protein => RNA. Introners are a loop from RNA => DNA.
- gus_massa 4y ago
  Virus are not Protein => DNA or Protein => RNA. Their information is in DNA or RNA, so they are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus#Genome_replication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus#Genome_replication * DNA => RNA => Protein * RNA => Protein * RNA => DNA => RNA => Protein As far as I know, there is no method to do Protein => DNA or Protein => RNA at the celular level. It would be very surprising. RNA and DNA are quite similar and have similar encoding, so RNA <==> DNA is a 1 to 1 translation. The translation to RNA to proteins is not 1 to 1, and the translations table is quite arbitrary, so untranslating at the celular level looks extremely difficult.
sobkas 4y ago
> That’s sneaky. Ironically more like a computer virus than the classical viruses. Taking over the host and modifying its boot partition so that it permanently gets produced by the system. More like infecting compiler so every application build using it will include virus, including building compilers that will add virus code to their output and propagate it.
TeaBrain 4y ago
A fair amount of human DNA originated from viruses that infected our ancestors. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/virus-genes-human-dna-may-surprisingly-help-us-fight-infections-180958276/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/virus-genes-hu...

That’s sneaky. Ironically more like a computer virus than the classical viruses. Taking over the host and modifying its boot partition so that it permanently gets produced by the system.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

There's basically no such thing as a boot partition. The machine of life has been turned on since the beginning. At this point, with all of the changes since the beginning, it's not obvious that there's a "boot partition" left that could reactivate life should it shut off. All cellular progeny is made with already functional and switched on proteins and RNA. The best you get to shutting off (without permanent cell death) would be the computer equivalent of hibernation. All the proteins and RNA are still there just waiting for the signal to activate again.

jamiek88 4y ago
Crazy to think we are all here because of that first multi cellular organism splitting over and over and over. Life doesn’t reboot as you say, it is split off from other organisms whether seed, sperm, rhizome or any other method it’s just cells dividing and spitting off other cells. Mind boggling to me.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  Yeah. I've known this for years but it really struck me when I typed it out here.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  The idea that we all branched from a single ancestral organism has never sat well with me. Whatever started that process, however improbable... Well the universe allowed it to happen. Why expect that the universe wouldn't subsequently continue to let it happen, again and again?
  - Izkata 4y ago
    My understanding is this is what happened during the Cambrian explosion.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    Sure, but it would be a completely different tree of life, from a different origin. It's possible our origin was from a community of ancestral organisms, but at some point all terrestrial life that we have discovered so far intermixed enough to create an effective universal common ancestor that we all appear to branch from.
  - Tagbert 4y ago
    Because, once it happens in an environment, there is no more room for an alternate life form to arise. A new instance of life would have to compete against the established line and it is unlikely to survive that process.
  - samus 4y ago
    Life arising many times in parallel ought to have given rise to multiple trees of life with mutually incompatible biochemistry. Yet, overall life speaks about the same genetic language, and most things work very similar to each other. Life could still have indeed arisen multiple times, however, it probably either merged or got supplanted by its competitors. Life is simply too pervasive to allow for anything else. It would also immediately out-compete any newly arising life. There is some evidence that things like the genetic code, the choice of RNA/DNA nucleotides, and the set of the 20 aminoacids aren't really random. That would not rule out life arising multiple times, but the likelihood that it merged with other lineages would be even higher. Short summary: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/why-these-amino-acids-anyway https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/why-these-amino-ac... . A more in-depth paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378111900004765?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03781...
    - akiselev 4y ago
      There are a lot of microbes that are unculturable to this day and to my knowledge, no one has really done a proper investigation to see if the universal metabolic molecules like, for example, the hydrogen carriers NAD+/NADP+/NADPH, are truly universal. If we're going to see evidence of multiple trees of life, it'd be in those little details because most of the food chain has to interact with each other. Or fungi and other decomposers can bridge the gap. I think over the span of billions of years, evolution tends to converge too much for the trees to remain very distinct from each other.
- jwestbury 4y ago
  So we're all just orphans from a long-dead init process? :(
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    And there's a problem with using a computer analogy. We are survivors(!) from a long-dead process. And have become far more than that process could have ever imagined, if it could have imagined. We are Tron!
nobody9999 4y ago
>The best you get to shutting off (without permanent cell death) would be the computer equivalent of hibernation. All the proteins and RNA are still there just waiting for the signal to activate again. Fungal spores[0][1] come to mind. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore#Fungi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore#Fungi [1] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/37268/can-mushroom-spores-survive-the-vacuum-and-radiation-of-space https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/37268/can-mushroom...
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  Tunned tardigrades are even better! https://www.livescience.com/58309-how-tardigrades-survive-drying.html https://www.livescience.com/58309-how-tardigrades-survive-dr...

marcosdumay 4y ago

It was well known that a lot of our genome got inserted there by virus. I think the news this article is reporting is that the defense mechanism is the explanation for that weird behavior.

akavi 4y ago

I'd say more like a classical virus with a loop earlier in the central dogma. Ie, in the DNA => RNA => Protein cycle, viruses are a loop from Protein => DNA or Protein => RNA. Introners are a loop from RNA => DNA.

gus_massa 4y ago
Virus are not Protein => DNA or Protein => RNA. Their information is in DNA or RNA, so they are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus#Genome_replication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus#Genome_replication * DNA => RNA => Protein * RNA => Protein * RNA => DNA => RNA => Protein As far as I know, there is no method to do Protein => DNA or Protein => RNA at the celular level. It would be very surprising. RNA and DNA are quite similar and have similar encoding, so RNA <==> DNA is a 1 to 1 translation. The translation to RNA to proteins is not 1 to 1, and the translations table is quite arbitrary, so untranslating at the celular level looks extremely difficult.

sobkas 4y ago

> That’s sneaky. Ironically more like a computer virus than the classical viruses. Taking over the host and modifying its boot partition so that it permanently gets produced by the system. More like infecting compiler so every application build using it will include virus, including building compilers that will add virus code to their output and propagate it.

TeaBrain 4y ago

A fair amount of human DNA originated from viruses that infected our ancestors. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/virus-genes-human-dna-may-surprisingly-help-us-fight-infections-180958276/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/virus-genes-hu...