this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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531
Smug Viruses (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago by Phineas_Rage@lemmy.world to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 53 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

True! Here’s a little additional information since the north is in virus season.

A virus is a protein wrapped in a protective fatty lipid. Heat will melt the fat, then break down the protein. That’s why viruses last longer on surfaces and clothing in the cold season, increasing probability of transmission. A virus can remain intact on a shopping cart handle for up to 24 hours in the winter, for example.

You can also rapidly break down the fatty lipid using isopropyl alcohol, or break down the protein directly using hydrogen peroxide. Be careful using the latter. It can bleach or discolor dyed textiles.

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 35 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Bats use heat to fly off their viruses, they get pretty bad ones, but when they're flying Bats get really hot. So it burns them off.

Also, some viruses have evolved into us and ended up serving functions in the human bawdy.

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 27 points 7 months ago

Yup. Up to 8% of the human genome is comprised of ancient viruses.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/17366

[–] TIN@feddit.uk 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

There was a Kurzegadt video about the virome recently

[–] TIN@feddit.uk 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

However, I can't find it now and nor can I spell their name, so apologies on both counts

[–] Entheon@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I believe you're referring to https://youtube.com/@kurzgesagt

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think they're on https://nebula.tv too, if you prefer that to YouTube.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 7 months ago

I can't see them on nebula, I just looked on the nebula app, but also on their Reddit and website

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 5 points 7 months ago

Another example; mammals probably developed pregnancy using an Autoimmune virus' genes in the placenta to prevent the fetus from being destroyed by the immune system.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

the swedish department of health says the opposite though, that you have to wash your hands with soap to affect at least some viruses.

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

The WHO says the same. Soap is a surfactant, so the viruses will be mechanically removed from the skin, and flushed away by the water.

My comment was meant to be in regards to sanitizing surfaces. I’m sorry if that was unclear.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 48 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

Oh, they can spend long periods of time being inert, and then resume activity when conditions change to be more favorable?

... Like a tardigrade? Or a seed?

Oh, they cannot reproduce themselves on their own or within their own species?

... Like a obligate parasite wasp? Or a plant species that relies on a pollinator?

Oh, they do not reach a stable equilibrium within their ecosystem?

... Like humans?

I'll give you that viruses never metabolize and are not capable of homeostasis... but they do not lack 'any' of the characteristics of life, they have some big ones.

They reproduce, evolve, and respond to stimuli.

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 38 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] Rubanski@lemm.ee 6 points 7 months ago

Prions are just fucking terrifying

[–] DarkenLM@kbin.earth 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Mr. Smith's humanity is a virus speech intensifies

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

(Yes I know this is a different scene, but its funnier, and Smith's character arc is that he is a virus.)

[–] dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Agent Smith never heard of Australia.

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

But has he heard of Isildur and his bane?
Bane... Brisbane?

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not only do they evolve, they evolve more rapidly than any other creatures we're aware of. A virus can mutate almost immediately, whereas other animals require millions of years to display those sorts of dramatic changes.

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 months ago

Complex organisms can also drastically change from point mutations, although such changes are more likely to kill the organism as they grow more complex. Viruses are so incredibly simple and make so many copies that this doesn't matter.

Many organisms can hybridize, which can make drastic changes with much less chance of fatal errors. Plants especially like this; see farmed maize vs wild maize or the entire brassica genus.

Viruses also hybridize though, and can do so much more drastically. Most of the critical genes are in the host, so virus genomes are free to do whatever, and because they highjack other genomes a very small change can radically alter their behavior.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 9 points 7 months ago (4 children)

This virus on it's own is absolutely useless and can't adjust to it's environment at all. A parasitic wasp is still a seperate entity that has it's own cells and genetic material that covers all basic function of a living thing. A virus is literally just a protein coat protecting a bit of genetic material. A parasitic organism is still doing cellular metabolism even if it isn't in a host organism, but a virus isn't.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Of course it adjusts to its environment -- it even uses it to replicate. Viruses are that branch of the genome which is being minimalist about its seed pods, other branches need all kinds of superfluous stuff like eyes and limbs and brains and whatnot. Complete waste of resources, having pods which can maintain independent homeostasis, what good does that for the homeostasis of the genome? Eh?

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Viruses make the simplest prokaryotes look complicated. A bacteria has ribosomes to read nucleic acids to make proteins and enzymes. That's the cellular metabolism that a virus actually lacks. It's not a matter of calling a person a living thing while their cheek cells aren't. You can take human tissue sampes and culture them indefinitely if you wanted to, because those cells are still undergoing cellular metabolism, taking in resources and excreting waste products. A virus doesn't even have the ability to read it's own genetic material. It's a hostile instruction manual.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's a hostile instruction manual which learns, adapting itself to its surroundings, constantly re-writing and re-inventing how it interacts with the world. Which is more than can be said about most politicians. Forget about physical anatomy, for a second, and consider the species as an organism.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's not, and i am not going to keep arguing in circles with people who want to contradict basic and agreed upon biology.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

I'm not contradicting anything, I didn't even use the word "life". I'm simply taking the perspective of the genome, and fighting against the notion that viruses would act as mechanistically as prions.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] angrystego@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Thank you for making the perfect reasonable and easy to understand points! Creatures with parasitic strategies have so many times been misunderstood due to their reduced bodies and functions. Viruses are the same case.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They're robots! They're machines!

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

Naturally artificial... artificially natural?
Sounds like something Nestle might try and get away with in the package labelling.

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Not really living, according to primates with limited knowledge, and arbitrary definitions.

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

You joke, but it's still a valid way of doing it.

If we are going be inquisitive in a systematic manner, we have to measure things in comparison, and to start doing that we had to start somewhere, in every single different field. Eventually we got to the speed of light as a constant, figured out the 1/137 fine structure constant, the helical configuration of DNA and RNA, etc., all starting from arbitrary suppositions, getting honed and adjusted by laboratory and thought experiments.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 11 points 7 months ago

Virus are a proto-lifeform, same as the creators of computer virus.

[–] tdawg@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I've never understood why things have to be binary. There are traits we consider life like and traits we don't. If you have more life like traits you are more life like. Simple as

[–] HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

As far as I'm concerned, it's all just varying levels of physics. Strings vibrate, atoms bounce around, molecules interact, substances react, cells form, organs grow, and consciousness emerges. It's just one long spectrum with a fuzzy and somewhat arbitrary cut-off point to where we determine it life

Physics becomes chemistry becomes biology

[–] tdawg@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago

Oh for sure. No argument here

I've always liked Hank Green's interpretation of life. In that it's a dynamically stable chemical system. Rather than a statically stable one. Like how a rock doesn't change much but a human is changing constantly. Yet both maintain their chemistry in more or less a balanced state

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

But physics turns out to NOT be a smooth gradient, there are steps, aka quanta, that's why they call it quantum physics or quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics.

At certain steps - not every step, but at certain mathematically defined points - thresholds are crossed and things behave differently, more energetic or complex phenomena emerge.

[–] el_abuelo@programming.dev 7 points 7 months ago

Enough of your woke agenda. Keep politics out of science.

/s

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

eh. if it evolves, it's alive.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 7 months ago

There are computer based systems that evolve. The environment is simulated to direct the desired evolutionary direction, the thing is simulated and reproduces and mutates by rule

For example antennas might live in a simulation where the EM waves of the right frequency are feed, with the most nourished antennae breeding to make many children and less nourished antennae having few children; over many generations an excellent high gain antenna with whatever other features were adaptive (size, shape, ...)

I wouldn't call those alive though we use many life associated words to describe them.

I personally would put the life line above viruses, Wikipedia needs to differentiate between viruses and cellular life.

I feel like we will have computer viruses that mutate and evolve and those that can better spread, better avoid detection will thrive while those that cannot will be destroyed. When that happens will we call it life?

[–] fadhl3y@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Viruses are intra-cellular parasites with both a living and a non-living phase. The particle OP pointed to is just a machine the virus makes to make more viruses.

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's the zip file, it can't do anything until a system unzips it. The resulting program can be really small and still do a lot, especially if it modifies another program.

[–] fadhl3y@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Great analogy