Unintelligent Design

[finalfrogo]

I'm wondering...

After the virus injects its DNA or RNA into a cell, what happens to that particular individual virus?

 

[joeboonda]

Oy vey - it's a S-T-O-R-Y!

Jesus referred to Adam and Eve, linealogies in the OT and NT traced back to Adam, many referencea were made to Adam in scripture, It may not be just a story, but may be a true story. But I won't argue about it, I guess we will all find out when we die.

 

[Ody]

** There is some debate on whether viruses are actually living or not. They aren't cells, but they sure seem to be bent on destruction.

Yes since they have only a few of the characteristics of life.

 

[mortuus monastica]

The idea of viruses predating living organisms is like imagining eyeglasses or shoes predating human beings; tapeworms predating the development of gastro-intestinal digestive systems, or computer data miners predating computers.

The concept of lifeless viruses, as they are today, giving rise to living organisms is quite the leap, yes – but there is no reason to discount that the virus itself may have changed significantly from the form that branched off into a lineage that could have evolved into current life forms.

And for beginners, a virus is not that far from a living organism – in theory, in practice, who knows – but most of the prerequisites are there: the protein capsid is not too far gone from being a cell membrane, the RNA or DNA does have the ability to interact with amino-acids within the virus to produce some basic proteins, though modern viruses, as we all know, prefer to use a host organism for protein production instead. The precursors to modern viruses may have had the ability to absorb resources through their geodesic protein capsid – not unlike cellular osmosis. The parasitical nature of viruses may have only developed once a relative had been able to evolve to a cellular level.

They aren't cells, but they sure seem to be bent on destruction.

They may not resemble cells, but there is nothing inherently destructive about viruses. Many bacteriophages infect the host without killing it and merely alter the organisms DNA to produce more phages in addition to the normal process of cellular mitosis.

 

[Valjean]

Finalfrogo: When a virus inserts itself into a cell's nucleic acid it becomes a part of the cell's genetic sequence, indistinguishable from the rest of the cell's genome.

AlanGurvey: Viruses do not have only a few of the characteristics of life. They have none of the characteristics of life, unless you count being a DNA sequence a characteristic.

Has no-one here ever taken a basic biology course? What's our education system coming to?

 

[Quoth The Raven]

Certainly, viruses seem to be the arch-nemisis of all life in the universe.

** There is some debate on whether viruses are actually living or not. They aren't cells, but they sure seem to be bent on destruction.

Nah, they're bent (if you can say that something without a mind can be bent on anything) on replication...any destruction is purely an accidental byproduct of that.

 

[Maxist]

I find it more beleiveable that we evolved from viruses, or cells, Paranesiumbrains and such.