Giant Phages: a discovery in the world of viruses | Hacker News Reader

Giant Phages: a discovery in the world of viruses

theatlantic.com

94 pointspseudolus11 comments

I was not expecting it to attack other phages. Fascinating article.

Always intrigued by this argument about whether viruses are 'alive':

"Viruses...cannot reproduce on their own and are completely dependent on their hosts. "

This is not a very strong argument? So many other creatures that lay eggs in a host have exactly the same restriction. Do we thinks some wasps are 'not alive' because of this?

Anyway, I'm a little startled and afraid of what these WhopperPhages are doing with those hundreds of thousands of genes...that's a lot of code.

Maybe the word “alive” cannot be rigorously defined in a way that agrees with our history and intuitions, and could be retired?

It’s certainly a silly word to gatekeep.

Not so much gatekeeping as rigorously defined, when speaking about it in scientific terms. Colloquial uses of words generally have a much lower barrier.

> and could be retired

Unlikely. It's still a hugely useful word.

I'd simply say that it's good we are being challenged to think deeper on what it means to be alive.

It's not the exact same restriction. When a wasp lays it's eggs in a host, it has already reproduced. The host is just providing an environment to store the eggs until they hatch.

If, to 'reproduce' means 'copy your own dna' then that makes sense. But by another view the wasp egg is just another stage in reproduction, still needing trillions of chemical reactions to become another wasp.

I would say that viruses are not alive not because they cannot just reproduce on their own, but because they do not have any metabolic activity on their own.

Kinda makes me wonder if gut phages etc. act as a sort of control plane for the bacteria.

This article is really important for whom has any interest in the medical research field !!!

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