Re:What's a virus, anyway? The bare-bones basics
by neuronic on Thursday April 02, 2020 @08:19PM
(#22765225)
To me, what blows most comparisons and analogies out of the water, is the insane complexity to it all. That genes can influence and interact with each other. So gene expression (= gene -> protein) can change gene expression, e.g. based on environmental factors or folding of DNA etc...
Gene A is responsible for property A is way way way too simplified.
Re:What's a virus, anyway? The bare-bones basics
by kaibee on Thursday April 02, 2020 @09:36PM
(#22765629)
The sense I get is that its more like some unholy combination of brainfuck, vhdl, and game of life.
Re:What's a virus, anyway? The bare-bones basics
by ethbro on Friday April 03, 2020 @11:50AM
(#22770466)
True, but in the same way that all engineering can be complex.
Which is to say, you can use quantum mechanics to augment Newtonian physics, but the latter dominates results in most usages.
Biology does have the quirk that sometimes (I guess because exponential growth / propagation?) nuances dominate observed result.
But usually things proceed as expected. Otherwise, we'd be killing people left and right with pharmaceutical side effects!
Essentially, everything is in the service of increasing order. And maintaining it.
Polymerase creates more genetic code out of raw ingredients.
Genetic code creates proteins.
Proteins perform all kinds of functions by leveraging physics and chemistry.
Membranes prevent all of this from being blown away and scattered in the chemical equivalent of a slight breeze.
... so, as you ask, 'Why genetic material in the first place?'
And to that, something of a tautology: because reproducing order reproduces.
Randomly assembled self-assembling assemblages constitute the major components of our environment, because everything else... didn't.
A rock is still one rock. Water is still water.
A blade of grass is now a meadow. A tree, a forest. A slightly intelligent primate, civilization as we know it. And a single mutated coronavirus, a pandemic in every country on the globe.