Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
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Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
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Re: Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
#2The idea that viruses are self-contained entities separate from the organisms they infect is an artifact of the human mind's power-saving system of modelling the world in terms of functional-decomposition. Viruses are non-living extraorganism messages crucial as a source of novelty in evolution.
Nevertheless, it would be nice to find cures for them.
Re: Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
#3The statement "There are fundamental differences between viruses and vesicles: Viruses can replicate and vesicles cannot" seems either paraphrased or dumbed down. Viruses can be replicated by cells, but they certainly cannot themselves replicate. And it's literally that kind of nitpicking that keeps science on track.
Re: Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
#4The idea that viruses are self-contained entities separate from the organisms they infect is an artifact of the human mind's power-saving system of modelling the world in terms of functional-decomposition. Viruses are non-living extraorganism messages crucial as a source of novelty in evolution. Nevertheless, it would be nice to find cures for them.
It's as though the vesicles are email, and viruses are spam.
Previously on HN:
800 million viruses fall onto every square meter of Earth every day. They kill 20% of bacterial life every day. [0]
Video simulation of HIV infecting a cell and reproducing. [1]
Re: Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
#5It's mindblowing that we can now directly image these vesicles https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4448148/
Re: Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
#6Apologies if I got this from HN, as I can’t remember the source, but the video halfway down this page shows the complexity of viral replication:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/watch-the-...
The article hints at some of the same mechanisms for extracellular vesicles. If that’s the case then maybe they are more closely related than outwardly expressed in the copy.
Re: Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
#7The statement "There are fundamental differences between viruses and vesicles: Viruses can replicate and vesicles cannot" seems either paraphrased or dumbed down. Viruses can be replicated by cells, but they certainly cannot themselves replicate. And it's literally that kind of nitpicking that keeps science on track.
The distinction, I think, is the matter of where the genome resides. Viruses have their own genome; they need to hijack the mechanisms of cells to reproduce, but it is their genome that is being replicated and disseminated. For a vesicle, however, it seems that the genetic instructions for creating them are part of the cell's genome, and those instructions do not get copied into the vesicle (at least, not in a form that can get itself replicated) even in the case of vesicles containing some RNA.
I would think that even if there was a form of bacterial sex that involved using vesicles as the medium for exchanging genetic material, that would not necessarily be virus-like unless the genetic material being transferred was capable of promoting the creation of vesicles containing copies of itself by the receiving bacterium. I don't know if that case would be distinguishable from a virus.
Re: Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
#8The idea that viruses are self-contained entities separate from the organisms they infect is an artifact of the human mind's power-saving system of modelling the world in terms of functional-decomposition. Viruses are non-living extraorganism messages crucial as a source of novelty in evolution. Nevertheless, it would be nice to find cures for them.
It's as though the vesicles are email, and viruses are spam. Previously on HN: 800 million viruses fall onto every square meter of Earth every day. They kill 20% of bacterial life every day. [0] Video simulation of HIV infecting a cell and reproducing. [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982396
Worse than spam. They're like that chain email all your relatives kept forwarding you about Bill Gates giving you a trip to Disney World if you sent it on to 10 other people.
Re: Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
#9The idea that viruses are self-contained entities separate from the organisms they infect is an artifact of the human mind's power-saving system of modelling the world in terms of functional-decomposition. Viruses are non-living extraorganism messages crucial as a source of novelty in evolution. Nevertheless, it would be nice to find cures for them.
It’s an interesting point. Having no medical / bio knowledge, is argue that from a logical perspective it could easily go both ways. 1) we model them to talk because we do 2) we model them not to talk because we don’t recognize their form of talk.
Re: Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses
#10I’m no biologist but this seems to blow a lot of things wide open.
Since these vesicles resemble viruses, is it possible for them to be a form of organism-to-organism communication? Accidental, or intentional?
Might there be pathogens that MITM vesicles en route? Rip them open and plant another message inside, and send them along?