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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Olog-hai. |
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Posted on 03/01/2013 8:51:09 PM PST by Olog-hai
Astonishingly, a virus that exclusively attacks the cholera bacteria was caught having stolen the functional immune system of bacteria—and is even using it against its bacterial host. A study published this week in the journal Nature provides the first evidence that this type of virus, a bacteriophage (“phage” for short), can acquire a wholly functional and adaptive immune system, something that was thought to be a too complex task for the very basic and “dumb” virus.
The phage used the stolen immune system to disable—and thus defeat—the cholera bacteria’s defense system against phages. Therefore, the phage can kill the cholera bacteria and multiply to produce more phage offspring, which can then kill more cholera bacteria. The study has dramatic implications for phage therapy, which is the use of phages to treat bacterial diseases. Developing phage therapy is particularly important because some bacteria, called superbugs, are resistant to most or all current antibiotics.
“The study lends credence to the controversial idea that viruses are living creatures, and bolsters the possibility of using phage therapy to treat bacterial infections, especially those that are resistant to antibiotic treatment,” said Camilli, professor of Molecular Biology & Microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine. …
(Excerpt) Read more at scienceworldreport.com ...
They’ll be voting Democrat before you know it.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Olog-hai. |
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Oh boy...another way to design bio-weapons!
Maybe one day we will find out that viruses and bacteria are the ‘intelligent’ creatures, and the rest of us are just food.
Especially if their primitive immune systems make them immune to common sense, logic, patriotism, and God.
Less alive than a sunflower, more alive than a brick - Stanley Prusiner
If they don’t feed on the Dems first . . .
I knew that there was a controversy about whether viruses are life forms or not but if not living beings what the heck would they be?
ALIENS.
I remain in the camp that viruses aren’t alive. They don’t eat or metabolize at all, they don’t reproduce, and they do nothing if there aren’t other living things around for them to subvert. They can only trick other living things into making more copies of themselves. Being able to passively defeat an immune system changes nothing. To me, they aren’t living beings, they’re loophole-like pathological special cases of replication gone wrong.
Aye. So saith Giorgio Tsoukalos.
The categories “living organism” and “not a living organism” do not exist in nature.
They are artificial constructs we create due to the overwhelming human compulsion to put things into categories as a way of mentally dealing with them.
IOW, the map (human representation) is not the territory (reality).
So whether a virus is a living organism or not is dependent entirely on the definition you choose to use for “living organism.”
If I could rate posts, I’d give yours an A+.
Hmmm. Interesting way to look at it. There is no doubt they are very strange things. Yet they do mutate into new types don’t they? I am thinking of the new strains of flu viruses and their like.
They’ll be able to vote Democrat, as long as you don’t call them a fetus. Because a fetus isn’t a life form. Puppies and viro-phages, sure. Humans, not so much.
Yes, flu viruses mutate their protein coat, which (temporarily) defeats the immune response that is geared to a particular type of protein. But what is described in this article is a more significant alteration, picking up a whole new capability.
I don’t disagree with you at all, which is why I began my post “I remain in the camp” rather than “Viruses aren’t alive.” Then again, any category that can be spoken of is just a human construct too, nobody would be talking about anything if we weren’t here. Nevertheless, categories are useful constructs which is why we make them.
I presented reasons to reject viruses as being alive, with which others are free to argue.
Don’t they always tell us the flu shot can’t make us sick because it is a “dead” virus?
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