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Viruses Infected By Viruses
SpaceAdmiral writes "Scientists have discovered a virus that can infect another virus. The fact that viruses can essentially get sick may change the debate over whether they are alive or not. Check out Nature for a slightly more technical article about the 'virophage.'"
How long till these things are linked to stuff like cancer?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
We call it 3 stooges syndrome and Mr. Burns has it.
I'm pretty sure they can reproduce, else there would be no risk of spreading them and they'd all die out soon after coming into being.
"The fact that viruses can essentially get sick may change the debate over whether they are alive or not."
Ya ... to the debate over whether the viruses that make the viruses sick are alive or not.
That is meant in the sense of an entire species, not individuals.
So are software viruses alive too? The only difference is that one replicates with code in binary, the other uses code in chain of molecules.
Life is not for the lazy.
Since previous /. story was about the university malware professor, for a second I thought this story was talking about computer viruses infecting computer viruses. Would that be possible too?
Obligatory.
Any chance this new discovery will lead to the engineering of a symbiotic "virus", as in, an organism that lives within us and helps us out? If so our long-standing fight against microorganisms may turn into a friendship afterall. Fighting fire with fire, an anti-HIV would make a lot of people happy.
The reason your school taught you that is because the definition of living usually taught in schools includes such characteristics as:
just to name a few. Viruses don't possess any metabolic function (they use the host cells hijacked machinery), they don't grow (once created, they are essentially static objects until they bump into a cell), and they have no means of independent reproduction (again, the hijacked cells reproduce the virus).
On the other hand, many people simplify the definition of life to solely the ability to reproduce (independently or not), which makes viruses alive, but also makes prions alive, and makes it fairly easy for humans to "create life" in the form of self-reproducing machines.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum,
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
- Augustus de Morgan, A Budget of Paradoxes
While I haven't heard of a virus hijacking another virus, I have heard of researchers hijacking viruses to do good things.
That's pretty much why viruses aren't considered alive, as they only propagate by hijacking living organisms' replication machinery. Eunuchs are individuals, that the definition of life applies to species, not individuals. Mules can occasionally reproduce, but is rare and it's due to the unequal distribution of chromosomes in meiosis. This isn't why they would be consider alive, they are the offspring of organisms that are alive. It's just an anomaly of nature. All viruses are parasites that depend on a host's replicating machinery by definition, therefore cannot be considered living.
you must be one of those students who are learning to write viruses...
been written by a student.
No, they are not alive even if they can get sick. Viruses, even infected ones, cannot self-replicate as they require the use of a host and host machinery. If you can find me a self-templating virus, then we'd have an interesting discussion...
viruses infecting viruses is still cool though.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
For the debate over whether viruses are "alive" to make any sense, there has to be some literally essential difference between things that are alive and things that are not. The past 200 years or so of biology ought to have taught us that, contrary to what seemed evident to the ancients, there isn't any such essential difference. Organic matter is just a form of organization of inorganic manner. From the point of view of what the ancients knew, there was a huge gulf between everyday living beings and inert objects. From the point of view of what we know, there are many intermediate cases.
So, instead of wasting time trying to decide whether viruses are "really" alive or not, you should just accept the fact that our knowledge today is advanced enough to show that the question--which we inherited from people who knew less than we do--is flawed.
Are you adequate?
So a virus that attacks viruses eh? I wonder if there a virus that attacks the virus that attacks the viruses? And a virus that attacks the virus that attacks the virus that...er...well, you know what I mean. And what if the first virus evolves to attack the last virus....every time you get one of those mysterious unidentified itches it could just be a ring of viruses all chasing each other around in circles!
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
I don't see why this should have any effect on the living vs. undead debate for virii. Anything complex and successful enough to fool a cell into absorbing and then reproducing it seems like a perfectly reasonable target for other, less host-adapted things to hijack. If something like this hadn't already existed, I'm quite sure it would have come along sooner or later.
What would be really impressive is for someone to figure out how the adaptation occurred, and whether we should be afraid or not.
cogito ergo dubito
according to the definition of life 'getting infected by a virus' doesn't make you a living organism...
To me, the issue of how to define "life" is only a small side note to this discovery.
Far more important are the consequences for medicine. Viruses can be attacked by other viruses. This is huge. Compared to bacteria, viruses have been very difficult to beat. Infectious bacteria can be combated by using anti-biotics, bacterio-phages and other means. Whereas viruses are significantly more hardy, and combating them directly is difficult. But this discovery opens the door to engineering virophages to attack viruses in our bodies that make us sick.
Could this mean that there could some day be the potential for crafting a virus, with the intent of infecting another virus to potentially destroy it? Something like this would probably have the potential to do more harm than good, but maybe this is a new way to look at potential treatments?
saying something is "alive" or "not alive" holds about as much weight as saying it's a "froodle doo". if the definition is standardized it should be easy to define: if not, what does it matter what we call it as long as we know what it does? attempting to apply terms that apply well to one group, from species to kingdom, to another group almost always ends in failure for this reason.
shame on the virologist for perpetuating this craziness. the real cool part about this finding is its possible medical applications.
makes it fairly easy for humans to "create life" in the form of self-reproducing machines.
What's so easy about that? It's never been done! It would be a stupendous thing if it were.
Ha-Ha!
Summary is totally misleading. The story isn't about viruses "getting sick" - it's about a certain type of satellite virus (not new) that can only infect a host that is already infected by another virus. Essentially the satellite virus is competing with the original virus for metabolites. The discovery here is that for the first time a satellite virus is competing for these resources to such an extent that it is actually destroying the original virus.
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
A lot of people have an innate discomfort with the idea that we are merely more sophisticated versions of something so simple and mechanical. I've always though viruses should be considered life because most of the counter arguments I've read are really weak, but they persist because of that bias.
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
that's anthropomorphizing it. Better to say they can have their replication machinery disrupted by another replicator.
Is a mule alive? It can't reproduce. Maybe you object because the mule is *made* of cells, each of which can reproduce, but your body is full of cells that can't reproduce, are they alive? What's reproduction got to do with being alive anyway? If you take a cell that can reproduce and mutate the gene that produces a necessary protein for the reproductive process, is the cell now dead? It can still metabolize, make other proteins and interact with its environment. When it no longer can, that's when we say it is dead. As such "living" already has a good definition, even if it isn't too strict, and that is the opposite of dead or, more precisely, "inert". Viruses are not just a package of DNA, (or RNA), they're also a system of proteins for delivering that package from cell to cell. A virus most definitely isn't "inert" in the same sense that a "dead" thing is. So if something isn't dead, what is it? Undead? We typically reserve that word for horror writers, and just say "alive".
I think the objectionable aspect of calling viruses "alive" comes from people thinking of viruses as "pure information", they're not. They're complex machines that can cause their own replication in their environment. Their environment just happens to be living cells, which are also complex machines that can cause their own replication in their environment.. To accept that a virus isn't alive because it needs its environment means you have to accept that a cell that requires a water environment isn't alive, or all multi-cellular organisms are not alive. Are mitochondria alive? Are the cells that require mitochondria alive? How about yeast? How about that mule?
How we know is more important than what we know.
What about computer viruses and worms? Some people argue that those are life, especially worms which are able to reproduce in their environment independently without a host.
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
For the classical definition of Living Organism, the virus are not alive; but is that definition correct? Virus contains DNA and reproduce by theyself. Although Don't eat, don't grow. But is not just an death element.
Even the prions are "quasi-quasi-living" proteins, no DNA, but make other cell reproduce copies of they.
Well any good definition to Living Organism?.
No recursing!!
Send your spendthrift head of state this
will this help in a fight against aids/hiv? c'mon people.
The interesting thing is whether we can use this in medicine. Can we create `counter viruses' to slow down the spread of, say, AIDS?
http://xkcd.com/244/ :)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
I read this as programmer ingenuity...(starts to open big books....)
.... life feeds on life ;) nobody here is pushing immortality so at some point you're going to succumb -- so why would you be afraid?
I hope it wasn't an STD!
What about computer viruses and worms?
TaDa! This just in from Science Daily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080806194601.htm
Are you implying that mules aren't a species?
OH.. Oh.. ohhh.. ok. I read the headline and I said "Man! Again, another article about Windows Vista!"
Kidding!
Could this have any implications for HIV? Sickening the HIV viruses so they die off in a host's body?
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
I don't think life means what you think it means, but therin lies the rub. We do not even have a clear definition of 'life' that science can agree on. To me, if it's made of genetic material and proteins and has a survival strategy then it is alive.
Unfortunately, I think there are a good number of slashdotters that won't be able to "reproduce"
You can design a robot that takes a robot body from a bin, a robot head from another bin, and combine them to "reproduce".
Yes. Mules cannot reproduce. The distinctions between species are based on the production of offspring which can reproduce to the nth generation.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
Our definition of 'alive' is flawed. Virii, plasmids, prions, etc. are not alive, but they aren't just arrangements of molecules either. They're in some sort of limbo.
Add to that the fact that this doesn't seem to infect other viruses, just uses a specific MHCI protein as a binding site that happens to be produced by another virus. In which case it's not that interesting.
This is more interesting in and of itself than it is to 'our belief of what life is' or something. We've known that 'life' is a pretty flaky definition for a while now.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Hell, fire's 'alive' by that definition. As long as it's got fuel, it metabolizes fuel, it physically grows as time goes on, and often, one flame will split into two when the fuel in the middle runs out. Yes, I know there's more to it than that, but I'm just pointing out that we've gotta be careful about how we define life, or else we run into a few problems we aren't anticipating.
Am I the only one that thinks that they replicate by way of using the the host tissue cells by tricking it to make duplicates?
If they're alive and don't have warp capability, Picard is gonna be all over this one.
It's somewhat interesting to note that as we've moved from scientific paper to phonebook to slashdot, the quality of whiskey required to make the reading interesting has increased from unqualified whiskey, to good whiskey, to fine whiskey. My noticing this and then posting about it is itself proof that I have no whiskey of any quality on hand.
Just to be clear, what I listed was only a subset of the definition. If you want a more formal definition, there is a decent one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#Definitions
Fire for instance, fails on homeostasis (no regulation of state to maintain equilibrium), organization (no cell structure; while I don't think we should require cellular structure, you do need some organizational principle), and no adaptation.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Did anyone else immediately think of software viruses when reading the summary title? (Given the previous article's title)
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
Because the statement that A = A is tautological, but the statement that A = B is not. The truth of the former conveys no information, but the truth of the latter does. To put it like Frege puts it, "The morning star is the morning star" is a trivial statement, but "The morning star is an evening star" is an astronomical discovery.
I see someone has never heard of cellular automata...
Did you say that out loud, and then quote yourself?
What's the value of information that you don't know?
They just called in sick then went down the beach for the day to infect some ice cream.
Task Mangler
Unfortunately, I think there are a good number of slashdotters that won't be able to "reproduce"
Correct, which is why a lot of people will tell them "Get a life!".
It gets stuck.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
All viruses are parasites that depend on a host's replicating machinery by definition, therefore cannot be considered living.
Don't all 'higher' animals begin life essentially as a parasite within the mother? Now granted, its the same species in this scenario, but it's still something to think about.
What about fungi? They are considered organisms and alive, yet they grow as a parasite in or on a living host or other form of organic matter, and cannot grow or reproduce without said host. That's not too far off from how a virus reproduces. True, fungal reproduction does begin within the cells of the fungus itself, but the line really isn't as clear as many would think.
On that note, no life form truly reproduces autonomously; the chemicals that life is formed of are created/encoded from outside materials. Animals take in these outside materials by eating, plants draw them from the ground, fungi from the aforementioned host/organic matter.
That said, It is true that when viruses replicate, the 'parent' virus does not take in material to reproduce (and rather, as mentioned, hijacks the host cells systems to do so). As important as that distinction may sound, I believe that when compared to how 'true' life forms reproduce, it seems mainly a question of semantics. It's a tough call, I guess all that can be said is that viruses certainly define the term 'gray area...'
Actually its quite easy - random variation on reproduction combined with limited resources so only the best survive. i.e. evolution.
And any good software engineer knows about Genetic Algorithms (+ GP, EA) which use this to become better at solving a particular problem. So we have achieved that - the only frontier left is moving this into the physical world, which hasn't happened as there is no good reason to do so! (why build something that takes a long time to become useful when you can do a good enough job from the start).
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Any definition of life doesn't make everyone happy because life is subjective. Life exists on a scale where at one end we all agree its not alive, and on the other we all agree it is alive - however just drawing a line somewhere in between and saying from here on in its 'alive' is pointless.
The same issue occurs when trying to define where one species stops and another starts in animals.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Those parasite and fungus and whatnot, have their own cellular machinery with its own basal functionality, accepting energy, execrating toxins, dividing etc, so even if they need a SPECIFIC environment to reproduce (the host) the reproduction process/cellular division or cellular life process are still available ad-hoc... Virus OTOH lack everything. They are more or less only proteins encapsulating a RNA chains which really need to hijack a real cell to be able to do even the most basic operation. Virus have no "metabolism".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I believe we have some footage...
Tricking to reproduce? Humans have been done this for ages.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Fire is the manifestation of the energy released in the burning process. The better analogy would be that fuel can be alive, when it burns.
...welcome our new sub-microscopic overlords.
Viruses being infected by viruses is nothing new. It's been happening with every version of Windows.
It's the same thing with planets and Pluto; early in school you need simple classifications. Unfortunately, some people will never really outgrow this level and continue to need them throughout their lives.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
-1 watched too much Star Trek.
(Bags mostly filled with water...)
bickerdyke
All viruses are parasites that depend on a host's replicating machinery by definition, therefore cannot be considered living.
Although it may not exist, it's easy enough to imagine a more complex life form which might depend on their host for reproduction in some way. Complexity is more the thing.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
>> makes it fairly easy for humans to "create life" in the form of self-reproducing machines.
> What's so easy about that? It's never been done! It would be a stupendous thing if it were.
Actually my sister's just done it, and from what I understand billions of other women have too. Happens every day. But yeah, if a /man/ created self-reproducing life, that would definitely make it into the history books. ;p
This is exactly as the night and day. We seem to be very certain that some things are alive and some aren't, but there are things out there that we just don't know about if they are alive or not. Are real viruses alive? They look more like a very complex molecule...
This is a problem only if you think that night and day actually exist. It's all in your mind folks...
To me, the mama virus infects the amoeba, and then sputnik infects amoeba's that have been compromised by the mama virus. It's more similar to secondary infections when somebody has HIV. There is a difference in that Sputnik infects things created because of the mama virus infection, but these are not the mama virus itself.
Those damn students, can't they do _anything_ right? When learning to write viruses, the first thing they do is infect other viruses. Oh hell...
I've never heard of a computer worm that can reproduce without actually having their code executed. Unless you're counting smurf amplifying subnets and ping packets perhaps?
GGGP
In other words until their code(DNA) is executed. Same definition applies.
America, Home of the Brave.
The trouble is that there are different definitions of "life", and all of them are problematic. The one you learned at school ("Mrs Gren" -- "Movement, reproduction, sensitivity", etc) was ok for getting through your school exams but isn't good enough once you start dealing with marginal cases (heck, as you point out it's not even good enough to deal with mules), and there's no consensus over how to deal with the marginal cases. That's before we deal with sciences other than biology -- a physicists definition of life is more to do with self-organising structures. "Life" is too vague a term to be used in a precise technical context; you have to say precisely what properties you're talking about.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Oh no. Doesn't that mean that the future robot creationsists will, in fact, be correct?
America, Home of the Brave.
...and GGGP would be what exactly ?
er, ... no it doesn't. An animal is a member of a species if it can interbreed with other members of that species. See Google ad infinitum.
America, Home of the Brave.
please cite the source of that argument...
Humans and "higher" animals have all the DNA needed to replicate themselves. Viruses don't. Parasites may well hijack the host's energy resources but viruses hijack the hosts reproductive mechanisms.
America, Home of the Brave.
Great-great-grandparent post.
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
See Ring species - species boundaries are not as clear cut as your definition would have them, though that's a good rule of thumb.
There are many arguments over how to define species - Morphological differences (which in practice is often the starting point), Biological differences, Shared ancestry etc.
Actually, not quite. Two animals are members of the same species if they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Standard example, that's already be referenced several times in this thread, is the horse and the donkey. They can reproduce, but they produce a mule which is not fertile. Thus a horse and a donkey are not the same species.
I guess I'm ready for one. Without even reading the summary, I assumed the topic must be about computer viruses, and immediately thought of "programs hacking programs" from the Matrix 2. God help me.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
In fact, TFA draws an analogy between vir and virus:
Come to think of it, couldn't that be how sex evolved?
Aw come, this was kinda funny ... in a Team America kind of way ... no?
"I'm pretty sure they can reproduce"
Viruses can be preproduced... just like a document can be preproduced by sticking it in a photocopier along with toner and paper. But there is a difference between being reproduced and reproducing.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
the noise you make when a heavy concept lands on your toe, especially when your feet are cold.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Not if they don't believe in evolution.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
"But yeah, if a /man/ created self-reproducing life, that would definitely make it into the history books"
Nope, that happens every day. I've just done it in fact, in your sister, and I believe billions of other men have too :-p
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Ring species are only two species where the intermediate species have not disappeared. The two species at either end are two definite species.
The definition of species still holds. If two neighbouring species can interbreed then they are the same species. If they can't breed with the next neighbour along then they are not the same species.
America, Home of the Brave.
"That's not too far off from how a virus reproduces"
Yes it is. A virus is like a bad analogy, it's just a piece of information represented in some form, like a car, or the blueprints for a car. If you have the correct machinery, and the a full detailed description, you can make a copy of that car, or if you have someone willing to listen, you can spread a bad analogy. But the car didn't reproduce, neither did the analogy. They were reproduced. Needing petrol to run on, or a mind to exist in, doesn't make it alive.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
"it's easy enough to imagine a more complex life form which might depend on their host for reproduction in some way"
Yep, through metabolism for example.
"Complexity is more the thing"
What's doing the copying is more the thing. Humans require feeding from a host (eg, eating other animals/plants, drinking alcohol) to reproduce (try f**king, carrying a child and giving birth without eating... this is slashdot, most of you will fail at the first step). Just because the process requires fueling, doesn't mean it's the fuel that carries out the process. Food doesn't make babies. People make babies out of food.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
A lot of times in school, I was told viruses aren't alive because they can't reproduce.
Well, then you've been given the wrong argument on why viruses can't be considered alive. Viruses _do_ reproduce, in fact, their only purpose is to do that. They are missing other characteristics of life, namely a metabolism and, connected to that, homeostasis and reaction to (most) external stimuli. Viruses don't use energy to alter their internal or external environment to their benefit, and the only stimulus they react to is contact with a suitable host cell.
Incorrect. Mules are sometimes (rarely) fertile.
Wikipedia: Fertile mules
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
makes it fairly easy for humans to "create life" in the form of self-reproducing machines.
What's so easy about that? It's never been done! It would be a stupendous thing if it were.
Easy is a realtive term. It certainly seems more obtainable than creating a macheine with Metabolic function and Physical Growth
So, if they can get sick, would that really be a proof of them being "alive"? What exactly is "alive"? Just fulfilling certain jobs, being able to reproduce? Or rather having a brain and being able of achieving consciousness?
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
virii
Viruses. Virii would imply the latin word, which described a liquid like substance. As we know, liquid has quantity, not quantities, therefore is not pluralised (eg, four pints of water, or four water pints. We see the quantity is pluralised, not the substance).
Understanding what viruses actually are came a long time after latin became a dead language, and so the pluralisation occured in our modern languages, while the pluralisation in latin continues to make no sense.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
It's the same thing with planets and Pluto; early in school you need simple classifications. Unfortunately, some people will never really outgrow this level and continue to need them throughout their lives.
How would you classify these people?
You can stick another part in my car and change its behavior. Adding a square wheel will make it bounce up and down, for instance.
That shows my car is alive!
Wow. No wonder it drives all over the road and too fast, makes sudden stops, takes the wrong turns ... oh, wait, no, that's only when something alive is controlling it. That's right. Now I remember.
The more we learn, the more subjective the definition of life is (to me at least). It's like defining what is art, or if a physical activity is a sport or not. There may be some basic guidelines, but it's still a blurry boundary. It's just a label.
But viruses DO have all they genetic material they need to replicate themselves. They merely use another organism for the actual mechanics of it. If they did not have sufficient genetic material, they would be unable to rewrite enough of the hosts dna to replicate themselves in the first place.
While very cool, and I encourage this topic... it isn't exactly groundbreaking. I learned in one of my Master's courses about Hepatitis D. It is a virion (so a virus that attacks viruses) and requires the presence of Heb B in order to propagate.
As long as we're going for bad analogies, this is more akin to a car pulling into a different brands factory and modifying the equipment there to reproduce more of itself instead of the competing model. Show me a car that can do that?
As said, it's a gray area, and there is no simple, definitive way to prove whether it is alive or not. Certainly, viruses are a bit too compicated to write off as simply a bunch of chemicals, but as to whether they're alive or not, noone can say. Anyone who truly believes that they can say either way definitely is certain to be overestimating his or her own knowledge.
which of course brings us to the conclusion that mules are sometimes (rarely) alive
Once upon a time there was a Big Papa Virus, a Giant Mama Virus and a Wee Little Baby Virus. The Mama Virus did resent being called 'Giant' since she had been dieting for the past year.
Their Little Doggie Virus named Sputnik sat under the breakfast table as the family of viruses began to eat their bowls of amoebae, it was chewing on the bones of a creeping nematode named goldilocks that it caught trying to burglerize the Virus family when they were out walking in the woods waiting for their amoebas to cool. Then the Doggie Virus farted, and the whole Virus family got sick, puking up their breakfast.
...
Just because a virus was infected by another virus doesn't make it living.
That "mamavirus" always had the possibility that it would be infected, it always provided the environment for a smaller virus to leech off it. But by the logic presented, until it is infected by the smaller virus or there is an example of the smaller virus, it is not living. That doesn't make sense for the virus to be defined as not living before, and then living after it is infected. To say that the proof of something being living is that it CAN support a virus would be a valid point, and that point would support the arguement that viruses are living, but the arguement presented is wrong.
Whether or not a virus is living is not for me to know, but this infomation alone, while cool, doesn't make viruses living.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
This is the God is Dead theory as applied to biological taxonomy:
This is but one of the reasons that the neopagan movement keeps gaining adherents among the growing number of post-Christians despite its aversion to evangelism. In a polytheistic framework, it is simply much easier for a nimble mind to sustain the necessary suspension of disbelief that is the core of Faith.
While this is a viable and interesting approach to the great questions of ontology, I don't see how it can be applied to virology. Fungi are generally considered to be living things, even though their spores are inert and can't grow or replicate until they are embedded in the (usually but not always) dead carcass of some other life form. It would be inconsistent to declare flu viruses as not alive while accepting mushrooms as being alive.
Let's just see how many noses we can tweak this morning, eh, Pinky?
This reminds me of corewars. Like a scanner spraying instructions all over the core in the hope that the other warrior will run its instructions. Of course, corewars has antagonistic strategies by design, but one could in theory write redcode that caused an opponent to execute one's code.
Only female ones are, so mules taken collectively as a species are not. Except they aren't a species, but anyway...
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Barman! Two beers over here, please.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
so sex is a viral meme?
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
My fault. I didn't really explain properly. They have the DNA that is the blueprint for themselves, but they do not have DNA that allows them to copy themselves. All they do is insert themselves into a cell nucleus and their DNA is inserted into the host's DNA strand and the host unwittingly replicates the virus as well.
America, Home of the Brave.
-1 WTF?
aaagh. Stop acting like you're off to play the grand piano and are fluent in latin. There is no such word as "virii".
...and that's before you even tackle the fact that the plural of a nominative -us word is -i, not -ii.
Any definition of life doesn't make everyone happy because life is subjective.
Life is not subjective. On the other hand, you are on the right track. When looking for the meaning of the word 'Life' (in the sense of being alive), we should follow Wittgenstein and note that use gives language meaning, and not the other way around.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I'm not a biology wiz by any means of the imagination. However, the first thing that came to mind was designing virophages to wipe out things like aids and other stubborn viruses. Basically, it would be the exact same concept as bacteriophage cocktails that are used a lot in other countries to cure infections. Granted, such things are very specific to a certain strain of a virus and I imagine there are lots of strains of something like AIDS. Still, it seems possible, even if currently out of reach, to engineer one of these guys to mutate and adapt to counter the different strains of a virus it might encounter. Just like these viruses mutate into seperate strains, your bioengineered virophage might do the same thing.
I've thought about this recently, too. It of course depends on how you define life. I think astrobiology is usually a good resource for definitions of this sort. If we found a virus on mars, would we say we discovered life? I think so. I like Carl Sagan's definition: "Living systems might then be defined as localized regions where there is a continuous increase in order." This is important to note, as the universe generally increases in entropy. At the center of all life we know is information. Information that replicates itself in some manner, as books are clearly not alive. So it would seem information (increase in order) and replication in some manner. So could a computer virus fit the definition? Conceivably.
Don't all 'higher' animals begin life essentially as a parasite within the mother? Now granted, its the same species in this scenario, but it's still something to think about.
A living individual animal only lasts for X amount of years. The level of importance is down to the gene, not really at the individual, but the individual will try to spread as much of its genes as it can to the next generation. This is a lot harder to do with females than with males, because females are typically stuck with the job of raising the kid, costing both resources and energy.
The fetus under development is not a parasite, because the benefit of the host is to pass on its genes to yet another generation.
What about fungi? They are considered organisms and alive, yet they grow as a parasite in or on a living host or other form of organic matter, and cannot grow or reproduce without said host. That's not too far off from how a virus reproduces. True, fungal reproduction does begin within the cells of the fungus itself, but the line really isn't as clear as many would think.
We all need some kind of resources to survive, but we have replicating machinery that viruses do not. Fungi have this replicating machinery, and much of what is understood about the replication machinery in eukaryotes comes from the S. cerevisiae, a fungi. It doesn't matter if an organisms is living on a host to leech off of some of the host's resources such as nutrients. We all get our nutrients externally. Viruses can't even replicate without hijacking the machinery of another organism. That's really neat, but that doesn't quite make them alive.
On that note, no life form truly reproduces autonomously; the chemicals that life is formed of are created/encoded from outside materials. Animals take in these outside materials by eating, plants draw them from the ground, fungi from the aforementioned host/organic matter.
That said, It is true that when viruses replicate, the 'parent' virus does not take in material to reproduce (and rather, as mentioned, hijacks the host cells systems to do so). As important as that distinction may sound, I believe that when compared to how 'true' life forms reproduce, it seems mainly a question of semantics. It's a tough call, I guess all that can be said is that viruses certainly define the term 'gray area...'
It's not really an issue of semantics if you consider how important it is for an organism to be able to replicate itself. It's one of the basic things of being alive, probably the most basic.
Assuming so leads to the question of what was the female cell? If sperm evolved from a virus, what was the purpose of the egg? It surely wasn't there waiting for some virus to come and infect it...
No matter how long you humans have been using tricks to reproduce, we virii have been doing it for much longer.
--Influenza
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
I agree with his point completely (though I don't share his intensity). I used to work for a pharma as a scientist. The stress on "alleviation" over "cure" used to baffle me... and that's just one thing.
Interesting article in New Scientist about this last week, concerning Colorado River sucker fish. They had two species that couldn't/didn't interbreed, had lived like that for centuries. Someone introduced another species of suckerfish. Turns out it *can* breed with both existing species, and now they're finding suckerfish that have genetic material from all three species, so, for any reasonable definition, those suckerfish are interbred from two species that were not previously capable of breeding.
So are the original two suckerfish distinct species, because they couldn't interbreed, or are they actually one, because now they can?
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
So this raises the question: Can a virus be infected with a virus, which itself has been infected with a virus? If so then God where does it all end?
I recently went to a doctor, and talked with her at length about the HPV virus and cervical cancer. The doctor kind of rolled her eyes and was annoyed at the whole thing, since very few cases of HPV lead to cervical cancer, and that it's all a big scare tactic by the drug manufacture to pimp their latest greatest vaccine. In short all the commercials and alarmist media coverage, just feed into their campaign to get girls vaccinated for a very small threat. In fact, it only vaccinates against a few strains and is causing some nasty side effects in some people.
Life will find a way.
But the three "i"s look WAY cooler.
It's not a difficult concept. Viruses get copied in cells, like a document in a photocopier. The document isn't reproducing, it is being reproduced by the photocopier. In the same way, a virus doesn't reproduce, it gets reproduced by the copying mechanism within the host cell.\
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Holmes: I'm reminded of the curious case of the Manchurian Mambo...
Watson: Holmes, could I have a word?
Holmes: Yes, what is it?
Watson: I believe that was the Manchurian Mamba.
Holmes: Mambo, mamba. What's the difference?
Watson: Well, very little, except that one is a deadly, poisonous snake, while the other is a rather festive Caribbean dance.
Holmes: It was a night like any other, when suddenly a knock came at the door. I opened it, and there were these Manchurians, doing a rather festive Caribbean dance...
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
"this is more akin to a car pulling into a different brands factory and modifying the equipment there to reproduce more of itself instead of the competing model"
No it's not, it's more akin to a car being seen in the driveway of a car factory, and the factory workers getting distracted by looking at that car whilst they're meant to be making another car, and so instead building parts for the car on the driveway instead of the car they're meant to be.
"As said, it's a gray area, and there is no simple, definitive way to prove whether it is alive or not"
No it's not, it's incredibly simple.
"Certainly, viruses are a bit too compicated to write off as simply a bunch of chemicals"
No they're not, they're so incredibly simple it's amazing. They can exist as only a handful of different types of molecules. Take a look at the HIV virus makeup. That's a TINY number of atoms in one of those compared to anything one would call alive. What's complicated is everything that exists in the host cell that facilitates the copying of the viruse. What's complicated about that?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
That's because in that case, "a beer" is not purely a liquid, but a unit of a certain amount of this liquid beer contained in a bottle or glass etc, which you are asking for two of. It's shortened purely to save time getting the orders in :-)
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Only to the unknowledgeable ;-)
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
So now explain what you mean by "preproduce" Is that when something is produced before it's produced?
What about computer viruses and worms? Some people argue that those are life, especially worms which are able to reproduce in their environment independently without a host.
Without a host? I've never seen viruses exist anywhere in nature except within the confines of a Computer.
If sperm evolved from a virus.. I seriously hope you don't think this may have happened. It didn't.
Is this a rhetorical question?
They *are* a species, just a hybrid one. By virtue of which female mules are rarely fertile, and male mules always infertile.
Is this a rhetorical question?
"So now explain what you mean by "preproduce""
Awww, can your brain really not figure out what I obviously meant there? Feel sorry for ya dude.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Considering this, even "fire" is alive by some definition: Given enough "food" and oxygen, it spreads and reproduces, consuming oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
The past 200 years or so of biology ought to have taught us that, contrary to what seemed evident to the ancients, there isn't any such essential difference.
On the contrary, biology has served to buttress what was evident to the ancients (as well as to contemporary folk). We moderns have dug down to the tiniest elements of living organisms and yet still fail to identify the material that separates the living from the non-living. The ancients are calling "checkmate."
Organic matter is just a form of organization of inorganic manner.
That was a sneaky sleight of hand. We were talking about living vs. non-living, and your argument shifted to an issue that no one disputes, pertaining to organic vs. inorganic material. Carbon, as we know, can be of a human or a rock. That's irrelevant.
If the difference between living and living were only a matter of "form," pray tell, what is the difference in form or composition of a living animal and a dead animal? The answer is beyond the reach of biological science (materialism). The answer is: One retains the breath/spirit that was divinely given to it; the other doesn't.
A strong (not a-gnostic) denial of this tenet is itself a matter of faith, since scientific investigation so far forces our eyes to the supernatural. We're down to the "bare metal," and the secret isn't visible to us. "200 years of biology," and all we've got is... TONS and TONS of evidence for an Intelligent Designer.
Not to be too hokey or trite, but truly, the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, or spirit (Hebrew: ruach; Greek: pneuma; Latin: spiritus), the breath of God (Gen. 2:7).
Getting back on subject... We were asking if these viruses are alive. Are sperm alive?
What organism really is autonomous? The irony is that humans cannot survive without millions of organisms leeching off of us (bacteria). The host sometimes needs the parasites as much as the parasites need the host. And look at the broader ecosystem. Everything is interdependent.
Moreover, is it really necessary that everything be categorized, as in nested folders? The new organizational paradigm is tagging. Science should learn from the Internet. :)
I don't see how that logic works. If you have four species, like some birds which occupy different parts of the globe and can reproduce with only their neighbours but not with the ones on the other side of the world, then how do you decide which are the 'species' and which are the 'intermediate species that have not disappeared'?
It seems your definition is just a waiting game for one of the two to die off so you can wipe the problem under the rug!
Another interesting problem is defining species in bacteria which don't produce sexually - currently its done by major function of the bacteria (i.e. if the bacteria feeds on one type of food and in the next generation switches to another it becomes a new species).
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
We can kill viruses, is that a definition of them being alive - maybe. Should we stop wasting time discussing whether they are alive, and instead spend time researching how to better use viruses in medical research and curing diseases caused by them - definitely.
I see nothing in any of the parent posts that refers to a computer worm that can propagate without having it's payload executed or otherwise 'run' on a host pc
Jesus.
Now I am going to go to hell for having a cold.
If we define life by things that can get infected and sick, then Windows XP is most certainly alive.
or else!
Who cares about whether or not it is alive. Can this virus be used to infect other viruses in a controlled manner? Can we program it to kill aids or other viral diseases?
or else!
To the nth generation of mules? No. Female mules almost always produce stallions or male donkeys, not other mules. Their offspring are usually infertile, too.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel