HIV evolving 'into milder form' • Hacker News Board

Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'

#61

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 7:03 PM UTC

Justsignedup wrote: post #42

snowwrestler wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously viruses are not intelligent and they don't "want" to reproduce. However, they do reproduce, just like pretty much every other form of life. The question of why life does that is closely related to the question of what life is and how it came to exist. Those are deep questions and we don't really have a clue as to the answer right now. There's certainly nothing in the fundamental physical laws of the univers…

What if life is just an accidental misshapen rock which spreads itself changing constantly to adapt to ever hostile environments. OMG What if we're the cancer of the universe, who is in itself a giant amoeba!??!!?!?!? deep thoughts, with jack handy

Closer than you might think. Howard Odum in 1971 suggests that humans are something of a decomposer, working on a backlog of accumulated energy and mineral deposits:

Sometimes in half-seriousness we say that man may have been evolved by the system as a mechanism to get the fossil fuels and other minerals back into circulation. We hope he is pre-adapted for other roles after that.

From Environment, Power, and Society.

An analog I use is to opportunistic benthic whale fall communities. The emerge and develop rapidly. They do not sustain.

Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'

#62

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 7:08 PM UTC

bayesianhorse wrote: post #17

billpg wrote: post #6

What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.

"Unintended" side-effect yes. But not really avoidable. The very nature of viruses means destruction, competition for resources with other physiological processes in the host, and they only have a limited capacity to tune their reproduction for optimal transmission. Too little reproduction (and in the wrong places) means too little transmission, too much reproduction means too much damage and thus also less transmiss…

It's quite avoidable. The viral load in various ecosystems can be tremendous, and many are generally benign. Even the non-benign generally don't kill their hosts.

An interesting tidbit from xkcd's "What If" series: individual cell mortality from viruses in the oceans is about 20% per day.

http://what-if.xkcd.com/80/

http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1vyanj/viral_so...

Jared Diamond has offered related observations on pathogens and parasites in tropical vs. temperate climates. It strikes me that an ecosystem in which there are periodic resets (e.g., killing winter frosts, or long summer droughts) offer a more amenable set of living conditions to those species not affected by those resets, whether by adaptation or technology.

Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'

#63

Post by BrainInAJar » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 7:09 PM UTC

"In theory, if we were to let HIV run its course then we would see a human population emerge that was more resistant to the virus than we collectively are today - HIV infection would eventually become almost harmless."

Because millions (or billions) of people would die, leaving only those with resistance.

Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'

#64

Post by ars » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 8:55 PM UTC

couradical wrote: post #57

ars wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would imply that HIV viruses compete with each other, and this competition is able to suppress each other. This is typical with bacteria, but I don't think it happens with viruses.

Sure it can - think of smallpox: the first smallpox "vaccine" was actually inoculation with cowpox - a similar, but less virulent virus. The provoked immune response rendered a smallpox infection less lethal, and provided a measure of protection. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine

That's quite different, we are speaking of have two pathogens compete, not about triggering an immune response.

If you took someone who is already infected with smallpox and gave them cowpox it would not help.

You confused in what order the infections occur.

Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'

#65

Post by ars » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 9:01 PM UTC

ruairinewman wrote: post #21

Surely this process means that HIV is just as capable of evolving into something even more lethal over time, given the right environment? Given the relatively closed environment of a country like North Korea (for example) where diversity is restricted, its evolutionary path may take a different route than that observed by the University of Oxford research team?

> Surely this process means that HIV is just as capable of evolving into something even more lethal over time, given the right environment?

It's unlikely. HIV doesn't "want" to kill the host because that also kills the HIV, so it's the opposite of what it wants.

You would need an environment that favored killing the host over keeping it alive, and considering how HIV is transmitted that is unlikely. (Unlike Ebola where it can happen because Ebola is best transmitted from a corpse.)

Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'

#66

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 9:38 PM UTC

hazz wrote: post #9

zecg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epstein-Barr virus is close to that ideal, 90-95% of adults have it. Unfortunately, it's connected with cancers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein%E2%80%93Barr_virus

90-95% of adults had it at some point . Most people develop immunity to it and so it doesn't survive in them. I'd say the most successful virus in humans would be the common cold, given how frequently we seem to get it, although it's more of a massive family of virii.

[deleted]

Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'

#67

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 10:06 PM UTC

john_b wrote: post #32

snowwrestler wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously viruses are not intelligent and they don't "want" to reproduce. However, they do reproduce, just like pretty much every other form of life. The question of why life does that is closely related to the question of what life is and how it came to exist. Those are deep questions and we don't really have a clue as to the answer right now. There's certainly nothing in the fundamental physical laws of the univers…

Fundamentally life is just patterns of information and their associated support structures capable of reproducing and adapting to their environment. There really is no answer to the question of "why" life reproduces because life that does not reproduce ceases to be life. The reproduction component is inherent in its definition. As to why our universe is one which supports life, nobody really knows. Some invoke the an…

> As to why our universe is one which supports life, nobody really knows.

There's an implicit distinction in this statement, between the universe and life. Really, life is part of the universe too.

I'm familiar with the anthropic principle, but it doesn't tell us whether life is a necessary outcome of the physical laws of our universe, or whether it's just one of many accidental outcomes that are not forbidden by the laws of our universe. Both of those situations satisfy the anthropic principle, but are very different.

For example, we could speculate about a universe in which the nuclear strong force is stronger than it is here. Based on our theories of quantum mechanics and gravity, we can predict how that would affect, for example, star formation. Isaac Asimov explores this idea in "The Gods Themselves."

But Asimov also predicts what alien life would be like in that universe, and there he's on much shakier ground, because nothing in our theories of quantum mechanics or gravity predicts life. We don't know how chemical systems become alive...there's even not solid agreement on the definitions.

Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'

#68

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, Dec 02, 2014, 10:11 PM UTC

Justsignedup wrote: post #42

snowwrestler wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously viruses are not intelligent and they don't "want" to reproduce. However, they do reproduce, just like pretty much every other form of life. The question of why life does that is closely related to the question of what life is and how it came to exist. Those are deep questions and we don't really have a clue as to the answer right now. There's certainly nothing in the fundamental physical laws of the univers…

What if life is just an accidental misshapen rock which spreads itself changing constantly to adapt to ever hostile environments. OMG What if we're the cancer of the universe, who is in itself a giant amoeba!??!!?!?!? deep thoughts, with jack handy

Is life an accident, or a predictable outcome of physical laws? That's a pretty fundamental question, and one we should be able to answer scientifically. But we can't right now.

Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'

#69

Post by bayesianhorse » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 3:31 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #62

bayesianhorse wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unintended" side-effect yes. But not really avoidable. The very nature of viruses means destruction, competition for resources with other physiological processes in the host, and they only have a limited capacity to tune their reproduction for optimal transmission. Too little reproduction (and in the wrong places) means too little transmission, too much reproduction means too much damage and thus also less transmiss…

It's quite avoidable. The viral load in various ecosystems can be tremendous, and many are generally benign. Even the non-benign generally don't kill their hosts. An interesting tidbit from xkcd's "What If" series: individual cell mortality from viruses in the oceans is about 20% per day . http://what-if.xkcd.com/80/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1vyanj/viral_so... Jared Diamond has offered related obs…

So mostly people are talking about virus which can be actually identified and studied. Up until very recently this was pretty much restricted to those who reproduce massively and leave at least some clues. We know next to nothing about benign virus in eucaryote hosts (or at least I don't).

Also, I don't think "benign" virus compete with pathogenic virus for anything. This may seem strange, but unless the organism is completely shutting down, and probably not even then, only an extremely small fraction of cells are infected by any one virus. That's why you still have a nose after surviving the flu. Any competitive mechanisms would have to be more complicated.

Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'

#70

Post by kingkawn » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 10:48 AM UTC

waps wrote: post #16

kingkawn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.hhmi.org/research/cell-cell-communication-bacteri... this work is being done with bacteria, not sure it is possible with viruses though.

While this is a communication pattern, it is still governed by evolution. Therefore, as a host, you get one vote. Either you live at least long enough to spread the virus a little bit, and you vote that what the virus is doing is good, or you die before spreading, and you vote what the virus is doing is bad. Let's get voting !

We must live, if not for ourselves, then for the trillions of life forms that call us home.