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A comment on Spiegelman's Monster. Parent comment

Re:Spiegelman's Monster by adrianN on Monday June 06, 2016 @04:34AM (#11845380)
Fire and viruses have an important difference though, when fire replicates, its children don't inherit anything. A better example would be crystals as their structure influences crystals they seed.
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Re:Spiegelman's Monster by tambourine_man on Monday June 06, 2016 @05:01AM (#11845444)
Neither fire nor crystals mutate. That's the thing.

A crystals arrangement of its microscopic structure will always be the same, as will the oxidation reaction in fire.

A virus undergoes darwinian evolution and will adapt to its environment

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Re:Spiegelman's Monster by adrianN on Monday June 06, 2016 @07:17AM (#11845873)
Crystals actually do mutate, the crystallization process is not perfect and introduces defects.
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Re:Spiegelman's Monster by dekhn on Monday June 06, 2016 @11:08AM (#11847295)
that's not what mutation means.
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Re:Spiegelman's Monster by drdeca on Monday June 06, 2016 @12:11PM (#11847826)
I thought mutate just meant change?
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Re:Spiegelman's Monster by dekhn on Monday June 06, 2016 @12:46PM (#11848126)
in biology, mutate has a very specific meaning, and it does not include the formation of imperfect crystals. That area has its own set of terminology.
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