What's a virus, anyway? The bare-bones basics

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.

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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.

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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!

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