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Author Topic:   Origin of viruses
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 24 of 24 (671283)
08-24-2012 4:17 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by Drosophilla
08-23-2012 7:39 AM


But regardless of complexity of operation, all lifeforms have the basic function to make more copies of themselves. Unless you can think of another reason why a mushroom pops up out of the ground.
I think the suggestion is that viruses could be descended from cellular life, which found a parasitic niche that allowed them to do away with the cellular mechanisms that they could steal from their hosts.
The famous experiment by Sol Spiegelman, in which he supplied a simple virus with everything it needed to replicate itself for free, and then watched it's genome shrink to a tiny fraction of its previous size, could be an elaboration of the original process by which the first viruses evolved from prokaryotic ancestors.
This is all just guessing, though.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by Drosophilla, posted 08-23-2012 7:39 AM Drosophilla has not replied

  
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