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Hints of Life's Start Found In a Giant Virus
An anonymous reader points out this update on the world's largest virus, discovered in March. Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie were used to finding strange viruses. The married virologists at Aix-Marseille University had made a career of it. But pithovirus, which they discovered in 2013 in a sample of Siberian dirt that had been frozen for more than 30,000 years, was more bizarre than the pair had ever imagined a virus could be. In the world of microbes, viruses are small — notoriously small. Pithovirus is not. The largest virus ever discovered, pithovirus is more massive than even some bacteria. Most viruses copy themselves by hijacking their host's molecular machinery. But pithovirus is much more independent, possessing some replication machinery of its own. Pithovirus's relatively large number of genes also differentiated it from other viruses, which are often genetically simple — the smallest have a mere four genes. Pithovirus has around 500 genes, and some are used for complex tasks such as making proteins and repairing and replicating DNA. "It was so different from what we were taught about viruses," Abergel said. The stunning find, first revealed in March, isn't just expanding scientists' notions of what a virus can be. It is reframing the debate over the origins of life."
science is simple like that.
I, for one, welcome our new virii overl...oh forget it, this meme is no longer funny.
That is all.
Humans are a virus, or it is what disposed of the dinosaur.
Lets hear the creationist explanation for this one :-)
"It was so big we had to sterilize our lab equipment with a hammer."
How do viruses reproduce without complex lifeforms in which to do so? If it reproduces on its own, I don't think pithovirus can be classified as a virus. Then, in that case, what separates pithovius from the prokaryotes?
So, uh, what were these hints?
It's the only way to be sure
Or not.
the others call him Morris Worm.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I for one welcome our new viral overlords.
Maybe at some point we'll regard this thing as being on a continuum from mis-folded proteins to intelligent life such as whales. In the meantime, people will argue about whether or not it's really a virus.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
http://www.scientificamerican....
Don't thaw it out! I've seen the the BLOB movie, I know how this turns out...
That is all.
The sample being 30,000 years old doesn't seem significant because it's quite recent relative to the history of life, and even primates. The same kind of virus or a close relative is probably still around and the sample age probably has nothing to do with its size, but rather a happenstance of observation in that we tend to study old things harder than we do current things, and thus notice more.
Table-ized A.I.
"Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie were used to finding strange viruses..."
Is this the modern version of, "It was a dark and stormy night..." ?
Table-ized A.I.
They immediately recognized the organism’s viruslike shape — imagine a 20-sided die, with each face a hexagon
I'm having a hard time fitting together 20 hexagonal faces. OTOH, the herpes virus is shaped like a regular icosahedron.
Astounded at the hairy beard-like structures, a shiny bald pate-like structure in the dorsal region and the astonishing presence of a purple-and-white T-shirt on the virus, I shortly thereafter realized I wasn't looking at a picture of the virus but of it's discoverer, Eugene Koonin.
Somebody give that guy a razor blade.
I think the summary rather overstates the case. This virus, if a virus it is, doesn't so much hint at the origins of life as it puts a new perspective on the origins of viruses. The origin of life probably lies much further back in time than the emergence of viruses, certainly if viruses are 'degenerated' life-forms, evolved from cellular life.
Seen in this light, this new virus could be a primitive virus; but it rather begs the question whether 'virus' is actually a well-defined, mono-phyletic group. It seems quite reasonable to think that viruses have evolved many times during evolution. Firstly, although life is said to have begun when certain things came together and formed cells, there must have been a period when life or proto-life was more like a diffuse soup of components that would be part of cellular life, and while some of these combined to become cells, others may have become viruses. They may have evolved again at a slightly later stage from plasmids, pieces of genetic material that move between cells (or plasmids may have evolved as an extreme form of viruses, who knows?), and they may have arisen once more from bacteria or similar.
Then merged to become life as we know it. This is a hypothesis proposed by some science scientists like Robert Hazen.
Although we dont see pre-life metabolic fossils, some viruses could be pre-life reproductive fossils.
While it is true that most people must take science on faith (due to their personal inability to verify the claims), the key difference is:
1) The scientists making the claims have access to particle colliers, arrays of telescopes, etc., with which they CAN AND DO objectively recreate the claims being made.
2) The religious leaders making religious claims have nothing more than dusty old books, with which they CANNOT AND DO NOT recreate the miracles that the books claim, nor do they objectively demonstrate the existence of God.
So, humans that are alive and working TODAY can demonstrate the claims of science, whereas no living breathing human can demonstrate the claims of religion.
This is why the religious always harp on "faith" (abusing it to mean "belief without evidence" which isn't actually the gist of its greek meaning, but that is another matter). Religious beliefs require a category of faith that science does not (even if the distinction is largely lost on the greater percentage of the population).
What makes this a virus and not a bacteria, or something never found before? If it is so very different from a virus? I simply don't know here and I am asking for a dumbed down explanation as I am very ignorant on the subject.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but this is relevant:
Some people have not accepted their fear. They are afraid of death (as we all are), and they attempt to overcome this fear through beliefs about the afterlife. In order for this mental device to work, their beliefs must be unarguably correct. Since such beliefs are impossible to attain (all beliefs might be wrong, and hence are arguably incorrect), they compensate for this through violent dogmatism. Anything that might show them that their beliefs might be wrong is a threat, so they attack it.
Many, many people remain in this state. Their fear drives them to violate the spirit of their own faith, to the detriment of their fellow man. A quote I once read on this: "95% of Christians give the rest of us a bad name." This applies to other religions as well. The popularity of this state hides the jewel of authentic spirituality under a cloak of human pettiness.
Authentic spiritual work gives someone a different means of dealing with this fear. The mental device is emotional and mystical, rather than intellectual. The sense of dwelling in the divine presence cures the fear without supplying any specific facts about what happens next. The practitioner can simply accept that death is mysterious, and not need specifics about it, because they simply trust in God to ensure that the greatest good is achieved. Properly applied, these practices make people more loving of their fellow man. Such people do not go to war over differences of belief, nor do they panic when new learning challenges their old beliefs.
Authentic mystics tend to be well-received by those they meet (think Mother Teresa). They never ask for veneration (it literally has no value to them), but people venerate them anyway (because of their inspirational power). Not-so-authentic mystics (think sociopaths like Robert Tilton) are envious of this veneration and want it for themselves. So they pretend. And they succeed. They not only pander to the fears they are supposed to be curing, they actually cook up doctrines that reinforce those fears in order to keep people hooked. They drink in the fame and have no qualms whatsoever about sending their victims off to kill anyone who would attempt to dethrone them. These are the people you have to thank for the evils of mainstream Christianity, and the petty, shallow, and evil God it worships.
Lol