The worst part of witch hunts in science is that they so often involve controversies over words without precise definitions,
Tag: viruses
Is COVID-19 alive?
Villarreal and Mazur introduce a term that will be new to many— and relevant to viruses like COVID-19: quasispecies
Might COVID-19 be a recombinant of two pre-existing viruses?
Presumably, viruses don’t need to follow rules of heredity.
COVID-19 pandemic and zoonotic diseases (via animals)
The bad news, as you will learn, among other things, when you read the non-panic news, is that precisely because COVID-19 is much less lethal than SARS, it is apt to be around longer.
Michael Behe muses on design and COVID-19
Behe: … most viruses do not affect humans and may well have a positive, necessary role to play in nature of which we are currently unaware. (I would bet on it.) From time to time a storm arises in the virosphere and affects humans. But that’s no reason to think either that viruses weren’t designed or that the designer of viruses isn’t good.
Here’s a question that new ambigram viruses raise
“Not a random boo-boo on evolution’s part”? If the field of biology had not organized itself around Darwinian evolution (insert preferred terminology for the same sort of thing here) in the mid-twentieth century, would anyone think that up just now to account for all this?
What? A virus with no recognizable genes?
From what they’re saying, viruses don’t necessarily share any characteristics of common descent. Let alone universal common descent. Jury’s still out but this is big.
Large and giant virus proteins not linked to any known virus lineage
So giant viruses often boost host metabolism instead of destroying it and “the team was still unable to link 20,000 major capsid proteins of large and giant viruses to any known virus lineage”? Creation ex nihilo? Hey, don’t laugh.. Look, these days, they can’t even get mouse or human sperm to buy into Darwinism. Why would giant viruses care?
Even viruses have complex origins now
Well, this is interesting, for sure: “The findings show that this broad class of single-stranded DNA viruses, which infect all three cellular domains of life, have acquired their genetic components through complex evolutionary processes not traceable to a single ancestral event.” Maybe there wasn’t a “single ancestral event” for cells either. Also: The hope is to “resolve the question of how cell-based life came to co-exist with the planet’s staggering array of viruses (dubbed the virome).” One commonly heard hypothesis is that viruses are degraded cells. It will be interesting to hear alternative theses.
Do viruses play a hidden role in evolution?
Viruses seem to be everywhere, doing a lot of things, with apparent “ingenuity.” Maybe a discovery down the road will be that they cause many changes currently interpreted according to some Darwinian theory (kin selection, costly fitness, what have you … )
The remarkable world of virus communication
Do viruses think? Not in the human sense. As with plants, these communications are signals, not abstractions. But the signals raise an important question: If viruses seek to remain in an organized state, why are they not “alive”? If they are not “alive,” what are they?
Altruism? In viruses?
How can viruses have altruism if they are not alive? Let’s assume that this is not an argument for panpsychism (You are conscious, sure, but so is your coffee mug.) It seems to be an argument that viruses behave as life forms do.
Can the giant Medusa virus help explain the evolution of complex life?
As described, the authors’ explanation doesn’t follow. The Medusavirus substituting its own DNA for that of the host is no different from the cuckoo substituting its own offspring for another bird’s in a nest. The fact that the strategy works does not necessarily demonstrate a hereditary relationship between the two species.
Unique giant virus messes with current theories of viral evolution
Giant viruses have only been known from the past few decades. There is still debate about whether viruses are actually life forms. Surely, there will be many game changers to come. Anyone attempting to compile an evolutionary history of giant viruses would be like the person who writes the history of a major league playoff series after the first game. Without the crystal ball.
One way viruses get spread “should never have evolved”?
Maybe in some fields, we need more “stupid” ideas that don’t depend on what “should have” evolved.