Where exactly did viruses come from, and what purpose do they serve since they are not alive?
Also did viruses facilitate evolution at all, and could we make good viruses and inject them into ourselves to make ourselves evolve or live longer or whatever?
There are good bacterias that fight bad bacterias but the only purpose a virus serves is to rape shit up. Viruses are basically hacking organisms and multiplying using your body as a host meanwhile turning your cells into their cells and slowly changing you into something else, so I don't think there can be any good use for them at all.
>what purpose do they serve
Back to school with you.
Could we extract from say the HIV virus all of its genetic material and make new genetic material and insert it into the virus?
Shoo shoo.
It's a replicating molecular structure user, it has no purpose.
I think you need a lesson in evolutionary biology.
Yes and that's exactly what HIV researchers are doing.
>purpose
Nothing has a purpose
Anyway, viruses exist because nature abhors a vacuum.
Shoes?
Humans have a purpose, it's to live, enjoy life, and serve God.
addendum:
I also feel the need to mention I think viruses should be classified as a lifeform, albeit an extremely parasitic one. That they can't metabolize or reproduce on their own is fairly meaningless to me because in their normal environ (the cells they inhabit), they do reproduce and make use of nutrients. It's just their metabolism and reproductive functions are stored 'offsite'.
Kind of a dumb question, but is thrre a threshold below which a person no longer has HIV, or is a single virus molecule enough to reinfect the whole body again?
Theyve cured people of HIV?
No, but people like magic johnson with piles of cash have gotten their levels down to a nearly undetectable level
In fact if you take the virus + cell it's infected as the viruses 'true' form and the freely moving virus sans cell as simply an inactive stage in its lifecycle, then all confusion drops away and viruses are clearly a lifeform.
>Where exactly did viruses come from
Most likely "escaped" cell machinery.
>what purpose do they serve
A vehicle to promulgate their genes
They can't reproduce on their own so they aint life, like comptuers can't reproduce.
What the fuck kind of purpose does the common cold serve?
one theory is that they're transposable elements which escaped the host
>did viruses facilitate evolution
yes, they have genomes which undergo mutations, hence why there is a new flu vaccine every year
>could we make good viruses?
we already use modified virions to treat cancer
>make ourselves evolve or live longer?
you went full retard
Could you not make viruses like in Resident Evil that mutate humans to be like super soldiers or for cells to regenerate so that were essentially immortal?
no
>They can't reproduce on their own so they aint life
If I make you infertile you can't reproduce, but you're still alive.
Anyway viruses do possess the means to reproduce; the ability to hijack the reproductive machinery of other cells. They're really not much different from other parasites which go dormant when removed from an appropriate host.
wrong
they're not alive because
1. no metabolism
2. no protein production means
they rely on their hosts for energy and ribosomes
Why can viruses mutate us and mutate themselves but not to the extent of making us regeneate cells or grow extra appendages?
they have very small genomes making their potential for protein manipulation severely limited
>but why can't we make them longer?
virion size limitations
It's own : replication. Cell death and mutations are side effects.
Life is about maintaining entropy out of the "milieu interieur", using energy gained from nutrients to do so.
Viruses don't give a fuck about this and just hijack shit, replicate and bounce freely in the environment, they are not alive.
He is irrefutable proof of a young Earth.
>they rely on their hosts for energy and ribosomes
All parasites rely on their host for energy and nutrients in one way or another.
I should have said energy production
parasites have their own metabolism and cellular protein production, they only need nutrition to power it
viruses don't have means of protein production or energy production
Parasites make their own energy. That's metabolism, viruses don't have it.
Can we make the virsuses bigger?
after a certain point, it'll get too big to infiltrate cells
So there's no way to manipulate our own DNA to make our cells regenative?
unless a MASSIVE breakthrough in cellular development is found, not with viruses
Viruses can either inject the virion inside the cell (bacteriophages) and then no size can limit it. Or it can directly fuse with it or during endocytosis, if a virus have a capside the size of a nucleus, it could work.
The problem is just physical.
Check CRISPR/Cas9, it's the new hype.
A vrius is a relatively simplistic replicating molecular structure.
The term 'life' is employed to described a series of highly integrated systems built upon relatively stable - carbon based - replicating molecular structures, which vary in complexity.
Organisms are essentially organic robotic machines which house the aforementioned molecular replicators, some of which are fitted with an on board computer, otherwise known as a brain.
You're arguing semantics over a heuristic definition.
Tards.
I haven't heard of an animal virus that injects its genome, only fusion or penetration of the virion (though sometimes partially uncoated)
True, the lack of cell wall in animals removed the need of this system ?
But I wonder if it would still be doable.
the biggest concern would be proteases and the immune system, which is ridiculously volatile in humans
I'm doubtful it's doable with viruses
It's obviously impractical and just a food for thought.
The immune system can easily be silenced by the way, numerous pathogens just shut it down locally or hide from it.
I guess it is interesting to think about if you consider virion-associated proteins to be injected alongside the genome
So viral zombies are impossible?
Things do not have to "serve a purpose" to exist.
We can make viruses serve a purpose, however, and already do through various retro-virus therapies. So yes, we can and do indeed use them to make us live longer, and can, theoretically, use them to adjust our genome in other ways.
A lot of "junk DNA" is actually viral-immunity data, so they've had an indirect impact on evolution in the natural world as well.
Have humans ever made a virus?
>You
humans are the virus
Yes, we regularly build viruses from scratch at the university here, and have a massive database dedicated to that purpose.
Engineered retro viruses for therapy are tweaked, but some of the more advanced experiments involve viruses essentially assembled from scratch.
Some more advanced labs have, kinda sorta, built bacteria, though there's some injecting involved.
Can you build a virus that will change someone's genetics? Like make them start growing blonde hair?
Theoretically, with a targeted retro virus. There's already retro-virus therapies approved for correcting color blindness. We can, theoretically, go beyond that, and improve on the human genome, for instance by increasing color acuity by adding tetrachromacy, and have already done so with chimps. Of course, you're getting into ethical areas they've yet to make laws about there.
we could "change" a virus to cure HIV or cancer or whatever. viruses could be a tool for doing great medical things in the future.
think about it, viruses are able to change or cut out parts of your DNA. when we can control them, we have something to work with. this could be the cure for lots of things.
no, humans are not special. our purpose is to recreate, like every other living thing.
how does crispr fit into all this?
What about changing eye color or making someone grow taller or enahnce their penis size?
There's a limit concentration below which we cannot detect the virus by testing (by qPCR looking for viral RNA), I think it's somewhere around 40 copies per milliliter of blood; modern HAART achieves this and the patient is not even contagious. By contrast, an untreated person may have billions of viral RNA copies per milliliter of blood.
>Where did viruses come from.
Its pretty hard to pin down, constructing a history of them is difficult because they don't fossilize well if at all and so their history is difficult to trace.
>What purpose do they serve?
Like all other biological replicators the only thing even remotely close to a purpose they have is to pass down their genetic material to another generation. Even this self-replication isn't directed towards any greater design as far as we can tell, if you've successfully reproduced then the only "purpose" is to do it again, and so on and so for until you're dead. All other purpose is something that we humans apply to ourselves, our tools, and species we deem useful to us.
>Did viruses facilitate evolution at all?
Yes, they kill off those who are not well enough adapted to fight off infection, this weeding process keeps our immune system strong and prepared to rapidly combat a constantly changing threat.
>Can we modify viruses to improve ourselves in a beneficial manner.
Yes, although such treatments are still in their early stages some promising results have been found in using tailored viruses to attack cancer for example. I think it's safe to say that we're a long way from Spartans or immortality though.
>Even this self-replication isn't directed towards any greater design as far as we can tell, if you've successfully reproduced then the only "purpose" is to do it again, and so on and so for until you're dead. All other purpose is something that we humans apply to ourselves, our tools, and species we deem useful to us.
What is the purpose of passing down genes?
And what is the purpose of gay people, sterile people, and those who choose to be celibate, if they choose not to reproduce?
No heterotrophic organism makes its own energy it simply acquires it from other sources. Viruses acquire cellular machinery through infection and through the acquired machinery they form their active stage. Think not of a virus as a capsid but instead as the infected cell, the capsid is simply a seed the viral cell releases.
Metabolism=/=life I can make a metabolic like solution that harvests energy from sugar molecules or heat to make a specific protein but is that flask alive? No.
Less a purpose more a function.
Gays are a form of population control, thus the running theory that consecutive male offspring cause epigenetic changes that the subsequent males are more likely to be gay. This is immediately herd animals, and there's some evidence it maybe the case in humans as well.
As for the rest, among humans at least, knowledge passed down from generation to generation has long since outpaced the information DNA passes down from generation to generation, so regardless of whether or not you actually breed, you can contribute to the betterment of the species, which is, at the moment, in no risk of extinction by under-population.
Do they not still teach this in elementary school? (Save maybe less wordy...)
Requirements to defined as "life":
1. Homeostasis: regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, sweating to reduce temperature
2. Organization: being structurally composed of one or more cells — the basic units of life
3. Metabolism: transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
4. Growth: maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
5. Adaptation: the ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors.
6. Response to stimuli: a response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion; for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis.
7. Reproduction: the ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.
Viruses are a gray area as they exhibit some, but not all of those, but most of those they do exhibit are dependent on life form, so that gray zone shade slides more towards the black.
Linked the wrong dern post.
There is none, it's simply what happens when biological replicators do their thing. Some just clone themselves, and others swap components like us. There is no actual purpose to this because nobody started it with a plan in mind, it is the inevitable result of a universe with a few fundamental attributes and some matter and energy floating around. Thinking beings assign purpose to components, and combine them to carry out some kind of function to accomplish some task. As far as science can tell there is no task the universe was set to accomplish, there is no design (complex things can and do arise from more simple things without the prodding of an intelligence) and there is no apparent designer.
Stop asking about purpose, there is none but what we apply to things, we didn't initiate life nor engineer the mechanism of evolution, so life and evolving things have no innate inherent purpose.
What about intelligent design?
Conjectures which have been declared non-scientific in the highest courts of law and almost universally rejected by experts in the field in favor of more accurate models do not have any significance whatsoever. Creationism (this is after all what ID really is) has never had any value as a theory to explain biodiversity because it's explanation relies on magic, does not explain the mechanisms by which life could become diverse, does not provide predictive capabilities, cannot be falsified (either its a global conspiracy to hide da troof, Gawd is just tricking us to test our faith, le Satan put down the fossil record, etc, etc, e-fucking-t-c), and makes demonstrably false claims about reality (lifeforms were poofed into existence in their current forms by a magical anthropomorphic immortal). Also the watchmaker argument fails because we can observe complex structures produced from less complex ingredients without a guiding intelligence. Irreducible complexity is also shit because while reduced complex structures in cells for example may not be able to serve the same function but could serve a different function and so they do not lose the ability to preform a function once reduced.
Nonetheless, survival, be it through reproduction, adaptation, and or spread, has become life's primary function, both for the individual, the species, and in some ways, the biosphere itself. That's as close to an innate purpose as you're liable to find, and it is something you can build collective goals with.
I wouldn't ever say that there is no function, just that there is no innate purpose. I'd say that to have a purpose something has to be made with intention to preform it's function. Since no designer with intent has yet been shown to exist, it's fair to say that biological replicators lack an innate purpose.
Like how you rely on your parents for food and housing.
Isn't evolution conjecture?
Nobel prize in bio Shinya Yamanaka led to our use of retro viruses to turn any somatic cell type into stem cells. This is what you're asking for. Stem cells are immortal until they start to differentiate. Other scientists use similar viruses to immortalize other cell lines. "Using viruses to make our cells regenerative" was a bio meme from like 15 years ago. It's all played out now and scientists can't use it anymore to get people to give them money. Some dudes even killed a teenage patient trying to use an adenovirus to do gene therapy on him. Jesse Gelsinger. That was like almost 20 yrs ago now
No, it is accepted currently as a theory.
Since creatards constantly misconstrue conjecture and theory, I'll give you the definition.
dictionary.com
>a coherent group of propositions formulated to explain a group of facts or phenomena in the natural world and repeatedly confirmed through experiment or observation
A mistake I often see made either in ignorance or with intent is to suggest that the definition of a Scientific Theory is the same as the colloquial definition of the word:
>an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain facts or events
>an idea that is suggested or presented as possibly true but that is not known or proven to be true
> the general principles or ideas that relate to a particular subject
This is untrue, because unlike a colloquial theory, a Scientific Theory is subjected to rigorous peer review and attempted replication, it is also never safe, the second a superior explanation comes along it will be discarded if it cannot provide some continued utility, like Creatardism.
beat me to it, motherfucker
I thought the US made the 13th amendment so you couldn't own niggas this way.
>growing a bigger dick
Keep dreaming
I thought that there was a recent successful functional penis transplant? There might be hope for nanopenis Anons in the near future.
It was but it was from male to male.
Does that mean when he masturbates that he's doing something gay since he's stroking another man's penis?
So in theory, does that mean a race targeted virus is possible too?
>mfw spray south side of Chicago
>mfw crime drops 90%
Go fuck yourself arsehole. Its a reasonable question and this is the right place to ask such questions.
Black people are the only once prone to sickle cell anemia.
In theory, you could build a retro-virus that recognise a specific type of cell, enter this cell and insert a DNA sequence at a specific point in the genome of that cell.
If you spray a virus (airborne retrovirus ? fat fetched) on it cannot home in specifically on blacks, it will enter everyone airways. You need to find a receptor on their cell that other races do not have. This seems totally impossible to do.
South Asia too.
naive kid
>bacterias and not bacteria which is already the plural of bacterium
>what is a bacteriophage?
>do you even...biology?
>not bacteriamuses
>kys
>what purpose do they serve
>assuming everything serves a purpose
fgt pls
>Also did viruses facilitate evolution at all
yes there are several examples of horizontal gene transfer from RNA based Bacteriophages. and some theoretic examples in DNA phages
Really makes you think.
I sure as hell wouldn't be comfortable with it.
>What is... proper green texting?
>facilitate evolution
yet another person who does not understand evolution
>There are good bacterias that fight bad bacterias but the only purpose a virus serves is to rape shit up ... so I don't think there can be any good use for them at all.
I disagree with this, viruses are destructive in nature, but so is a wasp. We can focus their destructive properties to help us which makes me really interested in focusing on virology after getting my Bachelor's, they have a lot of potential to them, just look at phage therapy.
Viruses are the method of genetic sharing by primitive bacteria. This sharing method was just too good and outlasted its originators.
"built bacteria"
that's an overstatement. replacing the genome of a bacterium isn't the same as building a bacterium. i assume you're referring to craig venters work.
>Also did viruses facilitate evolution at all, and could we make good viruses and inject them into ourselves to make ourselves evolve or live longer or whatever?
Is a gene which we have and use that came from an endogenized virus. Key role in placenta development and mammalian evolution.
Why is this same thread posted every week?
You could say the same for about 90% of Veeky Forums threads.
