4 ms·

> The entire cell contains several cytoplasmic domains, with each domain having a nucleus and a few chloroplasts. it reinvented being multi-cellular

• api 5mo ago
  It uses container based virtualization under a single host kernel instead of VM based virtualization.
• shevy-java 5mo ago
  Agreed. Humans draw rather arbitrary distinctions. It was quite funny in regards to viruses, aka parasite. Mimivirus are still a parasite, of course, but they even encode genes for metabolic pathways and are larger than some bacteria. See: "The Mimivirus is a giant virus that infects amoebae and was long considered to be a bacterium due to its size." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9133948/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9133948/ Although for me, I always used the definitions through the genetic information available (genome). So as long as a virus still is a parasite, I'd hold up that definition. It will be interesting when viruses are found that are even closer to a cell, e. g. some life cycle where they could switch between parasitism and stand-alone metabolism (or some hybrid in between; I mean if they can encode whole metabolic pathways, at the least some or some parts of it, the threshold here should not be impossible to overcome, and then the whole definition of a virus also has to be adapted since it would no longer make sense).
  • chasil 5mo ago
    Perhaps what you are seeking "retrotransposons," an endogenous retrovirus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrotransposon#Endogenous_retrovirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrotransposon#Endogenous_ret...
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]