Viruses: alive or not?

What you have to understand is that viruses are not thought to originate from one common viral ancestor, e.g. Megaviridae (Megavirus chilensis, mimivirus, mamavirus, etc.) and ssRNA viruses are almost certainly "unrelated". Megaviruses might have once been free-living microorganisms (sort of like mitochondria, chloroplasts and maybe peroxisomes) whereas e.g. simple ssRNA viruses might have resulted from "freak accidents" (correct genes next to each other in a genome making a run for it..) similar to the ones that have created e.g. homing endonucleases..

reply to post by Ayana

Ever think if we could find them and change them like we hijack viruses that we could make some incredible anti-viral medicines though?

That would be awesome to do... even with bacteriophage, the advancement is not that well. If we were to program Bacteriophage to to do specific things that would be a good advancement... i mean imagine tiny programmed robots , They have tested Bacteriophage as a anti-bacterial treatment.

Everyone else just found it gross. I was bouncing up and down like a kid at Christmas . I'm so in the wrong field.

Yeah fungus is more common than you think, and they grow almost anywhere... sadly fungus need more preparation to see thru scope, and can;t really gram stain them either... and some spores might cause allergic reactions.. its not safe indoors, need to be under fume hood or similar.

I want to go into psychopharmacology.

If you want to go into those, i guess you should stick to your field... Especially if you live in states,, the dependance on drug their is high, so money wise... your job would yield more... but both jobs have different end results... my main focus in vaccine development/research/production..there is a good company, but i need more experience.

reply to post by rickymouse

I've been studying the interaction of foods and many organic and inorganic chemicals and mineral complexes with the mind and body

People are in denial or just don;t want to admit... our current lifestyle or fast food and high sugar, high caloric food is no way good and its screwing with our body all the time....the amount of sugar we consume everyday is ridiculous...

___

I don't really know what my CEO or all the directors thinking, but i do know for a fact the people who do formulation, the development, the analysis are not out to kill people, or have any evil intentions.... people who work here is just normal people, doing their work and going home to their families... some even buy their drugs from the company(its cheaper for employees of course... actually most drugs are free... ).

reply to post by rhinoceros


While in school, i had a crazy theory that Virophage/bacteriophage(indirectly) are there to control humans(not mind control) population, by adding resistant or detrimental factors to our body.. imagine a highjacked bacteria suddenly produces cold resisting genes... and people without it is wiped.. etc etc...

reply to post by MDDoxs


Id say the whole process of fertilization is an engineered senario for delivering a massively complex virus.

imagine a period in biologys evolution were such massive and even larger viruses could have flourished.

reply to post by luciddream


I'm in the UK so I'm alright really. The NHS makes medicines a lot more available and therefore the funding tends to be there.

But I mean, an idea that simple, someone with the capabilities must've thought of it before and been unsuccessful with putting it into practice. No one in medicine could read about virophages and not think "anti-virals". Too much money involved in something like a cure for HIV.

reply to post by Ayana


Awesome post! I enjoyed reading it!

Ive done a lot of biology related school work and have always been fascinated by virus's and prions.

I enjoy debates about how life started. I think one of the most important things people need to realize is that there was no automatic quantum leap between non-living material and life/living material. There is a lot of very interesting chemistry going on between the range of inert matter and life. when you think about it, all of the requisites of life are nothing more than very specialized chemical reactions. so there was a lot of molecular evolution, or the evolution of the chemistry of the planet going on before we had full fledged life.

IMO.

S+F!

reply to post by VonDoomen


Thank you!

Oh, I know. I considered writing something up about mitochondria coz they essentially, in animals at least, create the metabolic process that we believe is "life". And yet, the DNA it possesses is it's own rather than what is essentially human.

So, the mitochondria may have infected a cell that wasn't "living" and boom! Metabolism. I've also heard theories that viruses combining with stuff could've kicked it off. It's a very interesting topic to delve into. But if I got stuck in I'd be there for the rest of my life so I just prod about now and again haha.

Originally posted by VonDoomen
reply to post by Ayana

 

Awesome post! I enjoyed reading it!

Ive done a lot of biology related school work and have always been fascinated by virus's and prions.

I enjoy debates about how life started. I think one of the most important things people need to realize is that there was no automatic quantum leap between non-living material and life/living material. There is a lot of very interesting chemistry going on between the range of inert matter and life. when you think about it, all of the requisites of life are nothing more than very specialized chemical reactions. so there was a lot of molecular evolution, or the evolution of the chemistry of the planet going on before we had full fledged life.

IMO.

S+F!

Like this perhaps (right click - save as, file is about 111 MB).

reply to post by luciddream


I don't think anyone is totally aware what is going on with the changes in the food chemistry that we are creating. They are breaking diet into pieces and comparing the similarities of the pieces. They consider known toxins as dangerous, toxins that the majority are not allergic to are considered safe. Everyone has foods they have not yet developed to eat. We usually don't like those foods because they cause problems in our bodies and thinking. We learn that from eating them, and sense something isn't right. Everyone has some food allergies, not one person in this world is exempt. Some have more than others. My allergies are different than yours, so on so forth.

Now you have highly educated people saying broccoli is good for you. There is way more bad than good in broccoli for most people. Want kidney stones or agglutinated blood or plain old problems absorbing and using iodine? Want thyroid disease or strokes or bloodclots? If eaten occasionally and boiled to well done these problems disappear. Other times it is beneficial to utilize some of these properties. If you crave broccoli, than eat it. Don't eat it just because someone says it's good for you. Taste it and see if you like it, without ever trying it you will not know to eat it when you crave it. If you sit there staring at the broccoli in the store, it probably means you may need something it has. This is one example of how educating people about eating has gone astray. Not enough is known by people of both sides of foods, they usually choose looking at the good it possesses and ignore the bad. or vise versa. The exact state of your body at the time of eating something determines the outcome.

A researcher would rarely see the whole picture of what is going on. They are trained to look with blinders on to see what they are told to research. Looking at the whole picture would jeopardise your job, you are paid to study what the company wants. I know this is the case, I did not want my workers working on what I was getting money to do. If anyone was to be doing that it would be myself or I would want to be informed of the sidetracking. The problem lies in the fact that nobody is assembling the knowledge of all the sciences and cross checking things. Research is being duplicated all over. Not many are comparing this research and bringing up other questions before it is released. Everyone wants recognition of their work and funded is needed so many times things get esxcluded from testing because of expensive costs. This causes errors in perception which is then repeated. Like I said, most times the release of flawed information is not intentional. Medical science often does know these things but remains mute because it is good for profits.

Originally posted by Ayana
reply to post by VonDoomen

 

Thank you!

Oh, I know. I considered writing something up about mitochondria coz they essentially, in animals at least, create the metabolic process that we believe is "life". And yet, the DNA it possesses is it's own rather than what is essentially human.

So, the mitochondria may have infected a cell that wasn't "living" and boom! Metabolism. I've also heard theories that viruses combining with stuff could've kicked it off. It's a very interesting topic to delve into. But if I got stuck in I'd be there for the rest of my life so I just prod about now and again haha.

There's metabolism without mitochondria, e.g. glycolysis, which happens in the cytosol. Bacteria and archae don't have mitochondria, however proteins and ion channels in their plasma membranes offer similar functionality (electron transport chain). Mitochondria are only found from eukaryotes, and they are almost certainly reduced alphaproteobacteria. Their closest free-living relatives belong to the SAR11 clade of alphaproteobacteria. The eukaryote cell acquired mitochondria about 1.5 billion years ago, before that, cellular life had already existed for over 2 billion years. However, the acquirement of mitochondria is what most likely enabled (due to "sudden" massive extra energy) the complexity and large size of the eukaryotic genome, and was a prerequisite for the eventual coming of "true" multicellular life. Most of the DNA of mitochondrial origin is by the way not in mitochondria, but in the nuclei of your cells (the genes have been transferred there).

reply to post by rhinoceros

certain clays shorts out the bacteria and kills them by causing the information to get screwed up. The flow of electricity present in the human body is enough to make the minerals in the clays kill the bacteria. This also necessitates repopulating the fluora of the gut with probiotics when finished. When the bacteria die they leave out chemicals that hurt us so eggs, coffee, charcoal, and milk can neutralize these. I don't remember the chemical names, meat can be used instead of milk. Bacon, eggs, and toast for breakfast and a BBQ with potatoes and asparagus for supper should alleviate this problem.

You cannot kill them. No.

They are the Nazgulvirus,

neither alive nor dead.

reply to post by Lazarus Short


You can electrocute them though. They don't hold up to that. Check for spark on your lawn mower.

Originally posted by moniesisfun

My question is: how does non-life give way to life? ...the extension being: at what point does non-life become living? We don't have a good answer for these questions.

In the case of a virus or prion I would say it is when they trick your cells into reproducing their DNA.

reply to post by rhinoceros


awesome video, thanks for the share! That is a new theory to me. The production of those cell-wall like structures seems to be INEVITABLE, simply due to chemistry and molecular arrangements. Which is another thing I believe, that life is inevitable. The very nature of chemistry, polar and ionic chemistry, just naturally leads to life.

I personally believe life is very common in the universe, especially basic bacterial life. now getting to the level of being a space faring civilization, well theres a couple hoops you have to jump through first! and not destroy yourself.

reply to post by Ayana


and not to mention, respiration is nothing more than a complex form of "making rust", even though the two processed arent the same, they really on the same attraction between oxygen and iron!

reply to post by Ayana


reminds me of a pleomorphic vector

Pleomorphism, Its Discovery and Suppression
When Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895) went public with his Germ Theory of disease, Europe continued to be ravaged by waves of infectious plagues, including Cholera, Typhus, Pneumonia (‘consumption’) and Tuberculosis; not to mention the not-too-distant memory of the Black Death. Pasteur’s discovery was due to the invention of the microscope.

The officials and public of the era were ripe for a simple and direct explanation from the emerging world of the Natural Sciences for these tragic and decimating diseases. However, at the time Pasteur was formulating and publicizing his work, a quiet, much more qualified and experienced researcher, Pierre Bechamp, was also looking at the new frontier-world of microbes, and came up with a more complex, but thorough, understanding of these miniature marvels.

He identified a fundamental unit of microbiological life, named the ‘microzyma’, which he said was critical in supporting the life of cells, but could be triggered into pathogenic states, depending on specific changes in the state of the internal (particularly the blood) environment. Therefore, the bacteria and other micro-organisms; viruses and fungi, that were being blamed as the cause of disease, were viewed by Bechamp as being part of Nature’s ‘clean-up crew’, breaking down sick tissue and ultimately decomposing a no-longer-occupied body. Bechamp also viewed these micro-organisms as ‘changing forms’ (pleomorphic): from seed to bacterial, viral and fungal states, rather than being seen as discrete species unto themselves.

Once these bugs have done the job, they revert to the ‘seed’ stage once again ready to support new life. The very ground we stand on is teeming with these fundamental biological units. I once saw a video of a microzma expiring and emitting a photon of light in the process. Perhaps these units represent the transitional point where Light becomes living Matter.

The consciousness of the era, however, was, as noted, looking for a simpler, more linear explanation for disease, and as Pasteur was more of a PR man than Bechamp, he won the recognition of academia and society. Also, the simplistic notion of ‘kill the bug, cure the disease’ was very appealing for the emerging Pharmaceutical trade, and continues to provide a major illusion in support of one of the newest ‘plagues’, the overuse of antibiotics.

Pasteur’s conscience, however, moved him to say on his deathbed, “Bechamp was right!”.

www.educate-yourself.org...

Dr. Royal Rife
In the late 20's and early 1930's, Dr. Royal Raymond Rife from San Diego, California, developed a high powered microscope which he used in conjunction with a frequency generator. Using special UV light, Rife's mircroscope was capable of 60,000x magnification! This degree of magnification allowed him to observe LIVE virus and bacteria organisms while he applied the MOR (Mortal Oscillatory Resonance) frequency from his frequency generator via plasma tube radiation of the energy. He was able to destroy all manner of disease organisms (including cancer related organisms) by merely 'tuning' the generator to the correct resonant frequency of these organisms and applying the oscillating electric fields via the plasma driven, "Beam Ray Tube". Everything in the universe, living or dead, and its own resonant frequency. If you apply this exact resonant frequency to the object or organism, it will begin vibrating until it literally shatters itself. You've all seen the wine glass and the opera singer demonstration. Same deal for microbes.

reply to post by DerepentLEstranger


or just electrocute them with a jolt from a spark plug wire.

Originally posted by rickymouse
reply to post by DerepentLEstranger

 

or just electrocute them with a jolt from a spark plug wire.

Those outside the electrical arc will survive, if "survive" is even the right term...