Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would you order the operations?
Not an expert but I suppose it's sufficient if you model the virus such that an eventual equilibrium is (or contains) your solution.
That's some serious hand waving.
New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection
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Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection
#32This would make for an interesting scifi plot. A global virus spreads that has multiple parts and people must limit their contact with specific people or risk acquiring components that activate the parts of the virus they carry.
In one of Greg Egan's short stories there is a religious maniac who engineers a deadly STD so as to permit only one lifetime sexual partner, lest the virus be activated and kill the fornicator. (If I remember the plot correctly. It's in the "Axiomatic" short story collection.)
The Moral Virologist
Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection
#33I think an alien looking at life on earth might find it very peculiar that so many of our life forms split into 2 independent parts that are unable to reproduce unless they match up with a partner of the opposite "sex". This is no stranger than that -- but it's fascinating to us who haven't encountered it before. The "sex" thing turns out to have big advantages: mostly that it allows for faster evolution by allowing…
Might be strange that we have sexes. Might also be strange that we only have 2 sexes. Many plants have two different generational types (haploid and diploid). Meaning each "generation" alternates between two different organism types. Fungi have both sexual and assexual reproduction [2]. But their sexual reproduction occurs when two cells directly fuse and then undergo meiosis into haploid spores instead of a diploid…
Fungal sexual reproduction has more than two mating types, as well, which is apparently made possible by handling the mitochondria differently from animals. In animals, the two parent cells fuse and the male's mitochondria is destroyed. In fungi, the nuclear material is transferred between cells, and incompatible mitochondria never occupy the same cell.
So a species could have one type or thousands of mating types, and may be homothallic or heterothallic. Meaning that individuals of the same type could be compatible, or not, respectively.
In a dimorphic animal species, if you wander the wild and encounter a random member of your species, it is about 50% likely you could reproduce. For some species of fungus, a random encounter could be as high as 99.999% likely to be compatible.
We don't even need to imagine aliens for this. We have species right here on Earth that are incredibly different from us, and also available to be studied.
Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
In one of Greg Egan's short stories there is a religious maniac who engineers a deadly STD so as to permit only one lifetime sexual partner, lest the virus be activated and kill the fornicator. (If I remember the plot correctly. It's in the "Axiomatic" short story collection.)
The Moral Virologist http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Moral%20Virologist
Yes, that's it!
Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sex can be much more complicated than what it is in humans. Completely arbitrary anecdotal evidence would suggest otherwise.
GP was referencing reproduction, not politics or recreation.
Fair. I've never actually attempted it in a reproductive manner, so I have no evidence there.
Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection
#36Surprisingly, sci-news.com has a better writeup on this than NPR - http://www.sci-news.com/biology/guaico-culex-virus-multicomp... “Although multicomponent genomes are relatively common among RNA viruses that infect plants and fungi, this method of genome organization has not previously been seen in animal viruses.” Edit: Thinking about this more, I wonder if this might be some sort of virus crossover vector from pla…
> Surprisingly, sci-news.com has a better writeup on this than NPR Are sci-news's usual writeups bad ? Why is it surprising ? Other from sci-news seemed fine to me .
It's more that NPR's write-ups are usually quite good.
Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection
#37Why if instead of spending money researching the diseases that mosquitos could transmit to humans on the future we spend all that money into figuring out a way to exterminate all mosquitos from the surface of earth once and for all?
As someone who lives on a tropical country and had have both Dengue and Chikungunya I can attest mosquitos are pure evil, and there are several researchs suggesting they serve no purpose on keeping the enviromental equilibrium (if they are gone, they won't be missed, the enviroment will be fine...)
On a side note, reading "U.S. Army Medical Research" , "Infectious Diseases", "new virus" and "mosquitos" in the same article makes no good to my paranoia...
Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection
#38Having the genome separated between multiple coinfecting particles is actually quite common among plant viruses.
Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection
#39Why if instead of spending money researching the diseases that mosquitos could transmit to humans on the future we spend all that money into figuring out a way to exterminate all mosquitos from the surface of earth once and for all? As someone who lives on a tropical country and had have both Dengue and Chikungunya I can attest mosquitos are pure evil, and there are several researchs suggesting they serve no purpose…
Exterminating all mosquitoes could doom the animals that eat them.
Birds, insects, spiders, salamanders, lizards and frogs could lose their primary food source.
Wiping out a large part of the ecology could be a disaster.
Re: New Virus Breaks the Rules of Infection
#40I think an alien looking at life on earth might find it very peculiar that so many of our life forms split into 2 independent parts that are unable to reproduce unless they match up with a partner of the opposite "sex". This is no stranger than that -- but it's fascinating to us who haven't encountered it before. The "sex" thing turns out to have big advantages: mostly that it allows for faster evolution by allowing…
Two of my most favorite books tries to shine light on some of the different aspects of your (first) question. Maybe the unexpected findings during the pursuit of this question will be as fascinating to you as it was to me.
The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped Human Nature (2000) (Geoffrey Miller)
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (Matt Ridley)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Queen:_Sex_and_the_Evo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_(psychologist)...