viruses

Comments

• herrcaptain@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Okay, this got me curious. From the wikipedia article on viruses:

  Viruses are considered by some biologists to be a life form, because they carry genetic material, reproduce, and evolve through natural selection, although they lack the key characteristics, such as cell structure, that are generally considered necessary criteria for defining life. Because they possess some but not all such qualities, viruses have been described as “organisms at the edge of life” and as replicators.

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  • Doxatek@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They’re not compromised of cells, and can’t replicate on their own and other organisms have to do that for them. The last point being important to our criteria for living. I was never taught as a biologist by anyone that they were alive

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    • Rubisco@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      o7

      “Obligate intracellular parasite” was drilled and showed up on multiple exams, along with all that you mentioned. I’ve also heard “escaped cellular machinery.”

      Absolutely fascinating…if a tad frightening.

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    • WolfLink@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There are plenty of organisms we generally consider “alive” that can’t replicate or do other key functions without other organisms.

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    • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There you go defining humans as not alive again

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    • gazter@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Are these requirements for your definition of life? Is it possible for us to reproduce without relying on other organisms?

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  • PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Theoretical biologist here. I consider viruses to define the lower edge of what I’d consider “alive.” I similarly consider prions to be “not alive,” but to define a position towards the upper limit of complex, self-reproducing chemistry. There’s some research going on here to better understand how replication reactions (maybe encased in a lipid bubble to keep the reaction free from the environment) may lead to increasing complexity and proto-cells. That’s not what prions are, but the idea is that a property like replication is necessary but not sufficient and to build from what we know regarding the environment and possible chemicals.

    I consider a virus to be alive because they rise to the level of complexity and adaptive dynamics I feel should be associated with living systems. I’ll paint with a broad brush here, but they have genes, a division between genotype and phenotype, the populations evolve as part of an ecosystem with all of the associated dynamics of adaptation and speciation, and they have relatively complex structures consisting of multiple distinct elements. “Alive,” to me, shouldn’t be approached as a binary concept - I’m not sure what it conceptually adds to the discussion. Instead, I think it should be approached as a gradient of properties any one of which may be more or less present. I feel the same about intelligence, theory of mind, and animal communication.

    The thing to remember when thinking about questions like this is that when science (or history or literature…) is taught as a beginner’s subject (primary and secondary school), it’s often approached in a highly simplified manner - simplified to the point of inaccuracy sometimes. Many instructors will take the approach of having students memorize lists for regurgitation on exams - the seven properties of life, a gene is a length of dna that encodes for a protein, the definition of a species, and so on. I don’t really like that approach, and to be honest I was never any good at it myself.

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  • Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Worth mentioning: life is a construct created by humans. We decide if it’s alive, just like we decided if anything else was alive. There’s no definite answer that science can provide on this topic. It can only provide humanity with more facts with which we can contrive a distinction.

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    • Dkarma@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      We’ve given life a set of repeatable rules that create a definition. Viruses don’t meet the rules.

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    • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yes, everything is a social construct and reality is fake and bad

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  • whotookkarl@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Perhaps an artifact from an earlier abiogenesis event that cannibalized itself before our own evolutionary tree started?

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  • theangryseal@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’m no scientist but I’d say, “Do it reproduce? Do it evolve? Do it try to survive? Bruh, it’s alive.”

    I’m no scientist though. Just an idiot watching thangs. :p

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    • KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It can’t reproduce on its own, though. It needs a living cell to do that.

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    • Shard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It seems to fail the last criteria there. They don’t actively escape or react to predation. For the most part they aren’t actively “trying” anything other than to just float around and replicate.

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• smeg@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Relevant xkcd

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  • Anticorp@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    rocks shaped like faces

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  • buddascrayon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They may not be alive but prions scare the every living fuck out of me.

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  • graymess@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The rare xkcd I find charming and relatable rather than charming and arcane.

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  • ElCanut@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Of course

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  • FrenziedFelidFanatic@yiffit.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ve been to this site hundreds of times, but this is the first time I’ve noticed

    xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing.

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• moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  fungi are extra alive somehow

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  • bfg9k@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I swear Fungi are an alien species, they’re so weird

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    • alekwithak@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      [deleted]

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  • Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    How so?

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    • sudo42@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Some have features of both plants and animals, so they’re kinda hard to fit into rigid categories.

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• Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Is this what some virus really looks like? It looks like Tron-era CGI.

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  • rockSlayer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The image is in fact CGI, but yes there are several viruses known as bacteriophages that look like this.

    Image

    Trying to find this confirmed electromagnetic scan of this phage led me down a truly fascinating rabbit hole about antibacterial phage therapy, taxonomy, and more. Let your curiosity take the better of you on Wikipedia

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  • Rubisco@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    At this scale we’d be seeing with electrons not photons, and everything would be gold coated. It’s unlikely the head would be transparent. But other than that, not bad. False color gets applied to the B&W EM images, which helps.

    Rabies is shaped like a bullet!

    Image

    Image

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    • moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      hmm yes rabies looks like a bullet because once you are shot with it you are dead

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    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Dannng. Cool reference pictures, thanks for sharing.

      Complex viruses seem almost too complex to function. Just from a human lead engineering standpoint, I can see so many points if failure

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  • Beryl@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Artist’s view of bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria and look like this

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    • paddirn@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They almost seem like just a “living” reproductive system, as if that’s the entirety of their existence. Like real-life Daleks going “IN-SEM-IN-ATE!”

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  • prayer@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yes, this is a bacteriophage. Truly fascinating stuff I’m lucky to work with every day.

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  • jobby@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Would you prefer it to have a little hat and mysterious (and unnecessary) white gloves ?

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  • flora_explora@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    More or less yes, that’s the type of virus we learned about in biology class at least. Although there are various shapes a virus can have. Like covid that is round or other viruses that look more like bacteria.

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  • pacmondo@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yes, I’ve always thought of bacteriophages as giant death robots of the virus world

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• eldain@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  🚨 Viral meme detected

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• Xantar@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Maybe undead ? That would explain all those viral zombie apocalypses.

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• logos@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Evidence of a false dichotomy to me!

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  • Screamium@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The third thing would be “inanimate”

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    • Reddfugee42@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Which is Latin for “not alive” so 🤷‍♂️

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• Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  These fuckers make me think they’re some kind of robot. They look man-made AF.

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  • Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Aliens.

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• Rusty@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Do prions count as another secret fourth thing?

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  • Khanzarate@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Nah they’re a single molecule. While they do have a mechanism to “reproduce”, they cannot react to stimuli of any kind, or evolve. Of the 7 commonly accepted traits of life, viruses have 5-6 depending on where you stand with them not being able to reproduce on their own. (In comparison, while a tapeworm or other parasite might need a host, they bring their reproductive equipment with them).

    Prions have 1 of those traits. They can’t regulate an internal environment as they cannot have one, they lack any kind of organizational trait, they have no metabolism (the other one viruses lack), they do not grow, they don’t adapt to their environment, and they do not respond to stimuli.

    A digital thermometer has organization and responds to stimuli, so it’s more alive than a prion.

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• OpenStars@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’m basically a needle for injecting drugs into you without consent, fight me (I’ll win anyway, some percentage of time).

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• Gork@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I found this to be interesting. The word (and concept) of a virus predates its actual discovery by over 500 years.

  The English word “virus” comes from the Latin vīrus, which refers to poison and other noxious liquids. Vīrus comes from the same Indo-European root as Sanskrit viṣa, Avestan vīša, and Ancient Greek ἰός (iós), which all mean “poison”. The first attested use of “virus” in English appeared in 1398 in John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomeus Anglicus’s De Proprietatibus Rerum. Virulent, from Latin virulentus (‘poisonous’), dates to c. 1400. A meaning of ‘agent that causes infectious disease’ is first recorded in 1728, long before the discovery of viruses by Dmitri Ivanovsky in 1892.

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  • jobby@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    So what about ‘Mastercard’?

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    • maculata@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Un-PC, that’s what!

      I wonder what they’ll change the name to.

      ‘Bosspersoncard’

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  • Rubisco@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It passed through all the filters! So small it passes the filters and kills–poison, toxin. But wait, it can be diluted to lowest possible effective concentration, and then with addition host it grows back to high concentration. What poison does that?

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  • Sanctus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I knew iOS was poison

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  • GammaGames@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I can’t find anything on the 1728 claim, but I remember hearing that Louis Pasteur coined the term while studying rabies in the 1880s!

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• Mikufan@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  That’s just some punk genome! Fuck em.

  Fungi is the third thing.

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• ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This little doodad reminds me of Jenovah Chen’s old freeware game flOw. Fun little game, but iirc it isn’t free anymore.

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  • Daxtron2@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Love his games, Journey is still one of my top 10 gaming experiences of all time.

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    • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I loved flOw and Flower, but I still haven’t played Journey, I need to get a good ps3 emulator just for that. Also I just checked and the 2006 “student” version of flOw is still free, the 2007 ps3 version is paid.

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• Broken_Monitor@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The replicators are real. I still think the version from Stargate SG-1 are the scariest though.

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• finkrat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Ok protein spooder

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• readthemessage@lemmy.eco.br ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Viruses are Schroedinger’s cat confirmed

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• MonkderDritte@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Isn’t metabolism one definition of life? If so, they’re not alive.

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  • flora_explora@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They actually don’t have a metabolism, that’s why they don’t fall into the definition of life in the first place.

    Source Wikipedia: “Although they have genes, they do not have a cellular structure, which is often seen as the basic unit of life. Viruses do not have their own metabolism and require a host cell to make new products. They therefore cannot naturally reproduce outside a host cell”

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    • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Man, all these biologists going on about cell structure are in for a rude awakening when we run into silicon based life forms. Or even Commander Data

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  • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You commented twice

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    • thetreesaysbark@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They’re checking the ‘can reproduce’ box for whether their comment alive or not.

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    • MonkderDritte@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Weird, i didn’t even got a server timeout, which is usualy the cause.

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• RGB3x3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Oh great virus! What is your wisdom?

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  • ThrowawaySobriquet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    R E P R O D U C E

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    • YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Nice, thanks

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• ToxicWaste@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  While technically phages are viruses, i think it is important to label them as phages.

  Typically a virus does not look like a robot. The by now rather well known SARS-CoV-2, with its spherical shape is a more common depiction of a virus: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus

  Bacteriophage look like little robots and from the view of a bacterium - they probably are the equivalent of a terminator: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage

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• xia@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Weaponized information.

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• Got_Bent@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Schrodinger’s biology?

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• Dasnap@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’m just a quirky little lad.

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