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Viruses Infected By Viruses
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Aug 06, 2008 09:09 PM
from the hoist-with-its-own-petard dept.
from the hoist-with-its-own-petard dept.
SpaceAdmiral writes "Scientists have discovered a virus that can infect another virus. The fact that viruses can essentially get sick may change the debate over whether they are alive or not. Check out Nature for a slightly more technical article about the 'virophage.'"
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We call it 3 stooges syndrome and (Score:4, Insightful)
We call it 3 stooges syndrome and Mr. Burns has it.
Endlessly recusrive life definitions (Score:5, Funny)
"The fact that viruses can essentially get sick may change the debate over whether they are alive or not."
Ya ... to the debate over whether the viruses that make the viruses sick are alive or not.
Re:Endlessly recusrive life definitions (Score:5, Funny)
"The fact that viruses can essentially get sick may change the debate over whether they are alive or not."
Ya ... to the debate over whether the viruses that make the viruses sick are alive or not.
It's living viruses all the way down.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of Viruses and Fleas (Score:5, Insightful)
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum,
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
- Augustus de Morgan [wikipedia.org], A Budget of Paradoxes
While I haven't heard of a virus hijacking another virus, I have heard of researchers hijacking viruses to do good things. [dailygalaxy.com]
not alive (Score:5, Interesting)
viruses infecting viruses is still cool though.
Re:not alive (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither can thousands of other parasitic species. All the same no one debates the status of all sorts of fungus and ferns and others who tap directly into the circulatory system and other facilities of their host and cannot survive or replicate without them.
If a true answer or classification as to whether viruses are alive or not comes about, I suspect it will be far more subtle and elegant.
Parent
Re:not alive (Score:5, Insightful)
Those parasitic species know how to do cellular reproduction. They also know how to metabolize stuff. They interact with their environment, even if that environment is another species. Virus are just reproduction machines. If RNA is the software of biology, the individual living things are the computers, and a virus is just a floppy disk that can't do anything until you stick it into the computer.
Actually, I think the whole issue is kind of meaningless. "Alive" is a concept we invented when it seemed pretty easy to tell living things from not-living things. Like all such concepts, it tends to break down as our knowledge of the world grows, and the old definitions become hard to apply. We just went through a similar issue with the word "planet".
Parent
there's no easy answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Is a mule alive? It can't reproduce. Maybe you object because the mule is *made* of cells, each of which can reproduce, but your body is full of cells that can't reproduce, are they alive? What's reproduction got to do with being alive anyway? If you take a cell that can reproduce and mutate the gene that produces a necessary protein for the reproductive process, is the cell now dead? It can still metabolize, make other proteins and interact with its environment. When it no longer can, that's when we say it is dead. As such "living" already has a good definition, even if it isn't too strict, and that is the opposite of dead or, more precisely, "inert". Viruses are not just a package of DNA, (or RNA), they're also a system of proteins for delivering that package from cell to cell. A virus most definitely isn't "inert" in the same sense that a "dead" thing is. So if something isn't dead, what is it? Undead? We typically reserve that word for horror writers, and just say "alive".
I think the objectionable aspect of calling viruses "alive" comes from people thinking of viruses as "pure information", they're not. They're complex machines that can cause their own replication in their environment. Their environment just happens to be living cells, which are also complex machines that can cause their own replication in their environment.. To accept that a virus isn't alive because it needs its environment means you have to accept that a cell that requires a water environment isn't alive, or all multi-cellular organisms are not alive. Are mitochondria alive? Are the cells that require mitochondria alive? How about yeast? How about that mule?
Parent
Re:there's no easy answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent is probably the most detailed response to my original post, so I'll address it, even though the chances (several hours after the article hit the front page) of someone reading or modding it are virtually nil.
Comparing a virus to a mule is a false comparison. With objections to those who seek a single, simply, unified definition, the standards for a living mammal simply do not compare to those of a single celled organism, let alone a virus. The simple fact that a mule cannot reproduce does not negate the fact that it has virtually all of the reproductive machinery and virtually all of the capacity to reproduce, plus a few defects (and, in fact, some mules can reproduce). No virus is prevented from independent reproduction due to a simple defect or mutation.
Saying that a virus 'lives' within a cell is a subtle argument that has merit. I find it lacking, though. To explain why requires an extension of my original argument: A virus, while able to harness the energy sources around it, does not have the enzymatic capacity to transmute energy sources into the ones it needs to survive and replicate. In addition, a virus is unable to respond to changing conditions around it, such as increased heat, a modified energy source, etc. Within the 'lifespan' (using the term loosely), a virus invades and replicates, period. Our cells can respond to various signaling components, change metabolism based on condition, and reproduce when asked. A virus simply cannot.
Mitochondria are not alive, because they cannot survive outside the confines of the cell, let alone replicate. Is your heart alive? By the very same token, yeast are indeed alive. Mules are alive, though reproductively deficient. Following the same idea, and borrowing your definition, a robot that could create another copy of itself would be considered alive in the 'environment' of the factory where it was built.
Parent
Re:not alive (Score:4, Insightful)
> No, they are not alive even if they can get sick. Viruses, even infected ones, cannot ...
> self-replicate as they require the use of a host and host machinery.
So cuckoos aren't alive either, since they rely on somebody else's 'machinery'?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, they are not alive even if they can get sick. Viruses, even infected ones, cannot self-replicate as they require the use of a host and host machinery. If you can find me a self-templating virus, then we'd have an interesting discussion...
But most people would consider say a tape-worm to be "alive". Just because it lives off a host does not make it non-alive. For that matter, even humans depend on bacteria to help us digest our food. To go lion-king on ya, we are all one big circle of interdependent li
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But you're on Slashdot, and therefore have no life.
Virus eating virus eating virus.... (Score:5, Funny)
So a virus that attacks viruses eh? I wonder if there a virus that attacks the virus that attacks the viruses? And a virus that attacks the virus that attacks the virus that...er...well, you know what I mean. And what if the first virus evolves to attack the last virus....every time you get one of those mysterious unidentified itches it could just be a ring of viruses all chasing each other around in circles!
important medical discovery (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, the issue of how to define "life" is only a small side note to this discovery.
Far more important are the consequences for medicine. Viruses can be attacked by other viruses. This is huge. Compared to bacteria, viruses have been very difficult to beat. Infectious bacteria can be combated by using anti-biotics, bacterio-phages and other means. Whereas viruses are significantly more hardy, and combating them directly is difficult. But this discovery opens the door to engineering virophages to attack viruses in our bodies that make us sick.
this dichotomy is ludicrous (Score:3, Interesting)
saying something is "alive" or "not alive" holds about as much weight as saying it's a "froodle doo". if the definition is standardized it should be easy to define: if not, what does it matter what we call it as long as we know what it does? attempting to apply terms that apply well to one group, from species to kingdom, to another group almost always ends in failure for this reason.
shame on the virologist for perpetuating this craziness. the real cool part about this finding is its possible medical applications.
summary = wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Alive or not? (Score:3, Interesting)
Our definition of 'alive' is flawed. Virii, plasmids, prions, etc. are not alive, but they aren't just arrangements of molecules either. They're in some sort of limbo.
Add to that the fact that this doesn't seem to infect other viruses, just uses a specific MHCI protein as a binding site that happens to be produced by another virus. In which case it's not that interesting.
This is more interesting in and of itself than it is to 'our belief of what life is' or something. We've known that 'life' is a pretty flaky definition for a while now.
Re:cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:cancer (Score:5, Informative)
in fact Viruses have been linked to cancer. Human Pamplona Virus (HPV) is thought to be solely responsible for cases of cervical cancer. Hence the push to get them all vaccinated at a young age before they start having sex.
Parent
Re:cancer (Score:5, Funny)
No, no! Human Pamplona virus is the one that makes seemingly healthy, sane people go running with the bulls!
Parent
Re:cancer (Score:5, Informative)
I believe you meant papilloma [wikipedia.org] (a virus that induces warts and similar growths), not Pamplona [wikipedia.org] (a town where you can be an idiot and get yourself gored by a bull).
Mal-2
Parent
Re:cancer (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:cancer (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a very interesting editorial piece [canada.com] in my local newspaper today on pretty much this topic that deserves to be read by anyone working in health / safety / threat / etc. research.
The short point is that when every preliminary study, or even hypothesis, is presented by the news media in the same fashion as something that has stood up to rigourous testing (e.g., smoking causes cancer), people begin to filter out everything.
That being said, my short summary doesn't do the editorial piece justice.
Parent
Re:cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:reproduction (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:reproduction (Score:5, Funny)
Tricking to reproduce? Humans have been done this for ages.
Parent
Re:reproduction (Score:5, Informative)
The reason your school taught you that is because the definition of living usually taught in schools includes such characteristics as:
just to name a few. Viruses don't possess any metabolic function (they use the host cells hijacked machinery), they don't grow (once created, they are essentially static objects until they bump into a cell), and they have no means of independent reproduction (again, the hijacked cells reproduce the virus).
On the other hand, many people simplify the definition of life to solely the ability to reproduce (independently or not), which makes viruses alive, but also makes prions alive, and makes it fairly easy for humans to "create life" in the form of self-reproducing machines.
Parent
Re:reproduction (Score:5, Insightful)
makes it fairly easy for humans to "create life" in the form of self-reproducing machines.
What's so easy about that? It's never been done! It would be a stupendous thing if it were.
Parent
Re:reproduction (Score:5, Insightful)
What about computer viruses and worms? Some people argue that those are life, especially worms which are able to reproduce in their environment independently without a host.
Parent
Re:reproduction (Score:5, Interesting)
What about computer viruses and worms?
TaDa! This just in from Science Daily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080806194601.htm
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Just to be clear, what I listed was only a subset of the definition. If you want a more formal definition, there is a decent one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#Definitions [wikipedia.org]
Fire for instance, fails on homeostasis (no regulation of state to maintain equilibrium), organization (no cell structure; while I don't think we should require cellular structure, you do need some organizational principle), and no adaptation.
Re:reproduction (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
in school? (Score:3, Insightful)
you must be one of those students who are learning to write viruses...
here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)
For the debate over whether viruses are "alive" to make any sense, there has to be some literally essential difference between things that are alive and things that are not. The past 200 years or so of biology ought to have taught us that, contrary to what seemed evident to the ancients, there isn't any such essential difference. Organic matter is just a form of organization of inorganic manner. From the point of view of what the ancients knew, there was a huge gulf between everyday living beings and inert objects. From the point of view of what we know, there are many intermediate cases.
So, instead of wasting time trying to decide whether viruses are "really" alive or not, you should just accept the fact that our knowledge today is advanced enough to show that the question--which we inherited from people who knew less than we do--is flawed.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
offtopic (Score:4, Informative)
Because the statement that A = A is tautological, but the statement that A = B is not. The truth of the former conveys no information, but the truth of the latter does. To put it like Frege puts it, "The morning star is the morning star" is a trivial statement, but "The morning star is an evening star" is an astronomical discovery [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It would seem to me that there is some significant qualitative difference between humans and rocks. Extending that further, it seems there exists differences between bacteria and rocks.
Essentially, the question is what is the largest subset of differences that can be used to distinguish between something that is alive and something that has never been alive.
A question arising from the previous one is, what is it exactly that separates life from death. We can't even detect life - only the by-products of wh
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, there are countless differences there. But let's assume the number of logically independent differences between a bacteria and a rock is N. This means that there are 2^N - 1 logically intermediate cases between bacteria and rocks. Now we're supposed to draw a line that says that some of those cases are definitely "lif
Re:reproduction (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Software Viri too? (Score:5, Informative)
Obligatory link to an old paper: Eugene H. Spafford. Computer viruses as artificial life [carleton.ca]. Artificial Life, 1(3):249-265, 1994.
The short answer is "no," but it makes for an interesting read if you have some whiskey to drink while you're reading it.
Parent
Re:Software Viri too? (Score:5, Funny)
The local phone book makes an interesting read if that's the excuse you need to relax with some good whikey
Parent
Re:Software Viri too? (Score:5, Insightful)
I will accept nothing less than slashdot comments to read with my fine whisky.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No more Laphroaig? Powers'll do ya.
"Viruses Infected By Viruses" (Score:3, Funny)
Kidding!
Re: (Score:3)
I recall some reading about testing (I'm guessing a year or so ago) about the use of the virus in fighting cancer. I can't find the exact article in question but I did find this.
Cancer-fighting virus shows promise in early clinical trial:
http://www.physorg.com/news103082669.html [physorg.com]
The virus, called NV1020, is a type of herpes simplex virus modified so that it selectively replicates in virus cells, killing them in the process.
This was in July of 2007 it would seem.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)