Unintelligent Design | Hacker News Reader

Unintelligent Design

discovermagazine.com

19 pointsgdee11 comments

One of the things about life is that it lack the discreet boundaries of math.

There is no clear, sharp, crisp line in the sand between life and not life.

And it turns out the line between virii and bacteria is kind of messy too.

In fact that's not surprising, what would be surprising is finding a sharp and clear difference, now that would be unusual.

And another minor point, we know of divergent evolution for things as complex as large animals, like echidnas and hedgehogs. And that article talks about all virii sharing the proteins to make their capsule, and implies they all inherited it from a common ancestor. But isn't that an extraordinary claim? Isn't it just as likely for there to have been multiple origins and we're just looking at convergent evolution? For things that simple, how many ways to build a capsid could there be?

> "And another minor point, we know of divergent evolution for things as complex as large animals, like echidnas and hedgehogs. And that article talks about all virii sharing the proteins to make their capsule, and implies they all inherited it from a common ancestor. But isn't that an extraordinary claim? Isn't it just as likely for there to have been multiple origins and we're just looking at convergent evolution? For things that simple, how many ways to build a capsid could there be?"

IIRC there are a few different mechanisms for capsuling a cell, however it's all controlled by all the environments it can be expected to combat. One of the main things that inhibits viruses is high temperature, which is the main reason why you often get a fever when you're sick with a strong variant of the flu.

In viruses it appears the protein layer serves the function perfectly, it's capable of replicating fine at human body temperature, it can deal with the acidity present in certain parts of our body (however, most cannot deal with direct exposure to stomach acid, they usually take the trip inside a chunk of food) and in certain viruses allows easy modification of their surface markers by a change in their amino acids. IIRC the protein surface also enables the easy stealing of the lipid layer from a human cell, which they use as camouflage. The protein capsid can easily attach to the lipid layer and also has a higher rigidity than a human cell, possibly to enable its passage through the cell membrane... I mean a virus wouldn't be very good if it just bounced off of a human cell or if it got crushed when trying to pass through the lipid layer.

It appears the protein layer serves a wide range of purposes quite expertly, which would suggest that viruses would likely evolve to use the same protein without connection. The true test of this theory will be the trip to Europa (if it ever happens) because 1 milliliter of sea water can contain 250 million bacteriophages, so it will be extremely easy to tell if Europa has life (unlike Mars) and I bet $1000 that any virus-like life on Europa will contain a protein capsid and any bacteria-like life will contain a lipid layer (due to the fact that the lipid layer can actively move nutrients into the cell, just like humans can actively put food in our moves... I don't think we'd have survived if biology had trusted luck in getting food into our moves and not hands).

BTW A side note: The plural of virus is viruses, I don't intend to sound rude but I love the English language and the reason behind is rather complex, and no one really knows why someone tried to use virii because it isn't talking about a virus. The use of virii to denote multiple viruses appears to be an attempt by some to sound more educated by using a more Latinized plural. However, the ironic thing is that Viruses is in fact the correct pluralization for the English language. Any argument that in Latin that multiple viruses would be virii is patently false, because it's double pluralized for a male word: truly the plural of virus in latin should be virusi, vir is man in latin, so viri is men and virii is a plural of a plural! However in latin the plural of virus would likely be, virus because it's not a masculine word and plurals were exceptionally rare. It's like one cannon and two cannon, you have one virus and two virus, however the English language says two viruses to make it fit.

Nice to see someone who knows their Latin! :-) Servus!

Mea culpa on the viruses. I myself will often point out how silly it is to stick an English word in the middle of a foreign language and decorate it with the language's plural suffix. It's particularly trendy do that in Eastern Europe, where I'm from. And as you say it is an attempt to sound more educated, however the ironic thing is that it just makes you look like you don't speak either English or your native tongue correctly.

Or in my case neither English nor Latin, thanks for correcting me.

I used to think virii was correct, but being a writer I developed the habit of obsessing over the meaning of words. So one day while writing a piece I happened to mention 'virii', well lets just say one day after my deadline I knew the method of pluralizing neutral second diminutive latin words... which basically is, you don't.

And thank the holy stars I was friends with my editor, cause he covered my ass many times. Although I produced the best work, so I guess it was in his own, and our bosses, best interest that he cover a slip up from the boss.

Old (2006) article but extremely intellectually gratifying. A leaf of a wikitrip of course.

In a way, it's not all that surprising that virus might have been around for longer than other living forms, being simpler and with less moving parts. It's the KISS principle of life, I guess.

An intelligent designer would have given us arms AND wings, and a green skin to let us feed from photosynthesis and the sun. The human race wouldn't be more than a couple of feet tall.

Now THAT is intelligent design. But as we know, designers work in mysterious ways...

Great article. For my money viruses are indeed "living" since what we call life is just that which carries and replicates RNA, or, the "selfish gene".

What's so special about RNA? What if our genetic code was bits and bytes on a computer? Would a computer be alive, or the artificial being that it created? If so, then a genetic algorithm already meets your definition of life.

This is an excellent point. I suppose I was just thinking about the natural world (on planet Earth). Indeed, replicating information, RNA or not, would be a form of "life", provided it was persisted. I think persistence here is the key. A genetic algorithm would be life as you say, provided I think that its states could be saved into a database or the like. Self-replicating, persisted information in some kind of definable form or shape is life, roughly I would think. So, sure, a GA counts provided you persist it someplace. Naturally occurring crystals in a cave would too for that matter. And if the physicist Lee Smolin is right, the universe could be a replicating entity as well, making new universes via black holes or similar mechanisms (see his book, "Life of the Cosmos").

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