This is a problem, all right. But really, why do these, or any life/quasi-life forms, have a “genetic alphabet” (an alphabet of life, not learning) at all if everything happened by natural selection acting on random mutation, as the textbooks claim? Let alone an alphabet of life they can just substitute some other letters for? Is there anyone out there who can do the math?
Tag: viruses
Of 70,000 hitherto unknown viruses in the human gut, over 40% of proteins had no clear function
The reader comments that viruses cannot afford to carry around much non-functioning nucleic acid. More likely, the 43% that are mystery proteins do have a function. If even viruses are much more complex than we expect, what chance that all these complex systems arose by natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism)?
At ScienceDaily: Cell defenses have evolved to turn the tables on viral attacks by using bait and sounding an alarm
Sometimes Darwinians are a parody of themselves.
Coronavirus lives in a world full of tricksters and does a lot of that itself
Nature is full of information and, while these viruses and cells don’t think, something in them does.
Viruses called phages, researchers say, are in a grey zone between life and non-life
Researcher: “Typically, what separates life from non-life is to have ribosomes and the ability to do translation; that is one of the major defining features that separate viruses and bacteria, non-life and life,” Sachdeva said. “Some large phages have a lot of this translational machinery, so they are blurring the line a bit.”
Something else to worry about?: Viruses stealing our genes
A new study promises to unveil “a novel mechanism that allows viruses to produce unexpected proteins.
At BBC: In case you wondered, what if all viruses disappeared?
We really do not know anything like what we should know about viruses before we just shut down our economies in a panic and so forth.
Another stab at Are Viruses Alive?
Hugh Harris: “Some properties of living things are absent from viruses, such as cellular structure, metabolism (the chemical reactions that take place in cells) and homeostasis (keeping a stable internal environment).” And yet, as he goes on to say…
Vague words in science: Vague or plague?
The worst part of witch hunts in science is that they so often involve controversies over words without precise definitions,
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.