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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5287930 No.5287930 [Reply] [Original]

Are viruses living things, /sci/?

>> No.5287932

No.

>> No.5287937

>>5287932
Why not? What constitutes living and not living?

>> No.5287944

Viruses don't reproduce sexually or asexually, and they aren't cells; so no. They are non-living.

>> No.5287947

>>5287937
Biologists have defined the term for their science, and they don't need philosophers questioning them. Besides, it is completely irrelevant whether something is "alive" or not.

>> No.5287948

>>5287937
Although I agree their definition is stupid, if that's what you're implying.

>> No.5287952

>>5287947
You sound like a Immoral human

>> No.5287951
File: 154 KB, 720x1280, Screenshot_2012-11-25-02-30-55.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5287951

>>5287947
So what's the definition of biology?

>> No.5287959

http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/yellowstone/viruslive.html

>> No.5287967

>>5287951
Are you trying to say that because biology is the study of living things, virus must be considered alive to be consistent with the field's name? Sorry but proteins and nucleic acid is also studied in biology and they wouldn't be considered alive by anyone's definition.
The bottom line is that it is useless to argue about semantics. Whether or not we consider viruses to be alive changes nothing about how they work.

>> No.5287975

>>5287967
What? No, I'm saying that by that definition of life viruses are alive.

>> No.5287979

If viruses aren't alive then what are they?
What best describes their state of existence?

>> No.5287983

>>5287975
Actually it doesn't, because viruses don't have their own metabolism or ability to reproduce.
The point is that if you allow viruses to be alive, you need to extend it to proteins, and nucleic acid as well. It's an arbitrary distinction, but it's what is used in convention.

>> No.5287990

>>5287979
What describes the state of existence of a rock? Or a hemoglobin? You can say infinitely many things about it, where it exists, what it's composed of, what human field of study it falls under... Nothing best describes a state of existence, nor does it need to. "Descriptions" of existence are just ways of organizing thought, and is a tool of the human mind.

>> No.5287993

>>5287983
What difference does it make if they're able to metabolize by themselves or not? The important piece of information is that they're able to reproduce, which is one characteristic of life. Also, another characteristic of life is the power to adapt.

>> No.5288000

>>5287990
Why do you insist on thinking this question of living or nonliving pointless? How can finding a way to classify and differentiate things, particularly organisms, matter?

>> No.5288003

>>5288000
*not matter

>> No.5288008

>>5287993
A rock falling of an edge of a cliff can reproduce. Less abstractly, and more relevant, a protein can reproduce by inducing folding. More normally, proteins are constantly being produced by cells. Should we consider the proteins to be another form of life that is making a symbiotic relationship with the cell? We could, it would be complicated, but we could. But we don't.

I think part of your confusion is that you think viruses are separate entities from cells, that long ago there was the first virus, and all other viruses originated from it. That's almost definitely not true. Viruses most likely originate from internal functions within cells, and new strands of viral evolution are constantly being created.

We know very little about viruses, and very little about biology, really. For all we know, viruses could be used extensively in our own bodies for intercellular communication, and we'd have no idea, because we only find viruses when they cause disease.

>> No.5288012

>>5287993
>A rock falling of an edge of a cliff can reproduce.

What?

>> No.5288030

>>5288000
Nice trips.

Because "living" is just a word. It has no mystical value. If it is a moral issue you're having, let me just say that I'm not suggesting moral nihilism, or that life has no value. You can accept that the definition of life, and your morals are arbitrary without being a souless robot.

>> No.5288034

>>5288012
Yeah man, rock falls and hits another rock, BAM two falling rocks. It won't last forever, entropy will get them eventually, but could you say any less about organic life, or the universe as a whole?

>> No.5288038

yes. They're DNA based life forms like us. Although they do not have our brains, so do not have our capability of survival, i does not mean they're not alive.

>> No.5288040

>>5288034
You're assuming that I defined life as being a property of animate entities. I never said that. A rock isn't capable to reproduce and metabolize. I don't understand what analogy you were trying to make.

>> No.5288044

>>5288030
Living is not just a word. It's a way to classify things. If I say that a rock and I are different because I'm alive, you can't just say that "Well living is just a word."

>> No.5288049

>>5288040
I guess the point I was trying to make with the rock was that you can abstract the ideas of reproduction and metabolism into basic things that a replicating thing needs. Basically just energy and a means to reproduce.

I used a rock precisely because it's commonly associated as being "not alive". >>5288044
What do they think I mean by "just a word"? I'm not belittling it.

Sorry, I think I misunderstood your argument. Let me start again and address your original question.
Viruses are not considered alive because they do not meet the definition of life defined by biologists. That definition of life is that it must do it's own metabolism, and reproduce with itself or another member of it's own species. This obviously has many points where it breaks down, (are infertile people "not alive" then?), but viruses simply do not meet it, because they don't conduct their own metabolism and they don't reproduce by themselves or with a member of their own species. It's an arbitrary distinction, but it is the arbitrary distinction in convention. That is what I meant by life being "just a word", it has a set definition by convention, and you can't argue with it.

>> No.5288050

I'd say no. Viruses have no metabolism other than their reproductive hijacking mechanism. They don't do anything when they're not invading cells and injecting RNA. If you were keeping a virus as a pet, you wouldn't have to care for it. You could just keep it in a box.

>> No.5288054

>>5288049
I thought you were saying that the biologists' way of defining life was not in accordance with the common definition, or that it was somehow important that viruses be considered alive.

So I was talking about the how the definitions of words are arbitrary and important only for communication of ideas, and that it would be difficult to extend the definition of life to include viruses because it would require prions and who knows what else (plasmids, transposons), to be considered alive too. Also that we know very little about the origins of viruses so it's not like they even deserve the same standing as cells do.

>> No.5288060

If you were a phage,

what you'd do first other than masturbate?

>> No.5288064

I always thought viruses were just leftovers from the primordial soup that eventually spawned life. The previous failures before the first bacteria formed

>> No.5288095

>>5288064
No, viruses are one of the last great mysteries in biology. No one is completely sure where most of them come from, or even how common they are. It's hard to study them because they are so small. You know how we know only a fraction of the species of insects in the world? We simply cannot guess how little we know about viruses because they could be present without our knowledge. For example we have only recently discovered they cause certain cancers, and we only found them because they were causing a big problem, and we were intentionally trying to find them in a very small area.

>> No.5288671

virii are not alive
they are bio-nano-bots

>> No.5288704

Putting aside the buzz word "Life"

They're organic
Have DNA
Act in a directed manner
Are not conscious
Can and do replicate

They, like us, are simply organisms. However, they are not organisms that use higher thought functions like we do. You can't use a term like "life" to describe something in this situations; not because it's wrong, but because it's inaccurate as fuck.

>> No.5288801

>>5288704

Not all virus have DNA, some only have RNA, while all cells have in fact DNA and RNA. Just a little correction.

>> No.5288829

ITT: Retards try to disagree with a well-accepted definition of life by exrapolating 'meaning' from arbitrary extrapolations.

fuck you guys. They aren't alive.
You can say they're alive if you use a different definition, but then you are no longer in the realm of biology.

It's like a mathematician claiming that numbers are alive because you can subtract them from each other and you get a new number from it.

>> No.5288887

Yes. Yes they are. The first cell was basically a bubble around a virus. See bacteria from there on out.

>> No.5288924

>>5288704
>Are not conscious

Very subtle /x/ troll. 4/10

>> No.5288932

Oh hey, Biology thread.

What is the evolutionary pathway for the formation of blood vessels? I mean, there are two types in our body, and I was wondering if this property is found in animals other than mammals (insects?), and how it was developed over time (think R. Dawkin's evolution of the eye video).

>> No.5289024

>>5287930
yes of course, you'd have to be freaking retarded to say otherwise, it tells much about biologists

>> No.5289114
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5289114

>>5288829

>> No.5289170

I think that viruses are a very good example of simple post-abiogenesis life forms.

>> No.5289186

>>5289170
>post-abiogenesis
You mean biogenesis?

>> No.5289195

>>5289186
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

What I mean to say is that they seem to be the quickest evolutionary end for something as simple as self-replicating DNA or RNA to reach, rather than evolving into more complex organisms.

>> No.5289245

>>5289195
Oh I see, you're saying that any organisms that were to come together through abiogenesis now would become viruses.

Actually I really doubt that because they would need to have the same genetic code as the rest of life in order to infect it. They are also made of complex protein coats that would never appear through abiogenesis. Viruses almost certainly have a biological origin rather than through abiogenesis. Or I could be completely misunderstanding what you're saying.

>> No.5289304

>>5288008
You are incorrect. A rock falling and breaking is not reproduction, it is division. The same goes for protein inducing folding.
The key thing to remember is that reproduction involves creating an exact copy of yourself, not simply dividing into two smaller things, but producing the same thing agian, which can continue to produce the same other things again. Viruses, proteins, rocks cannot reproduce the way living things do. They have to be produced by other things, like cells.
You are correct that we know very little about biology.

>>5287979
Viruses are basically tiny automatons that exist only to serve one purpose: to hijack machinery of a cell and create more of itself. It doesn't think or do anything else, it's a genetic mistake that was able to survive in the world because of a spectacular flaw in the mixing up of genetic material.

>>5288030
What this guy said. It would get us more places in this thread if we defined what "life" really means. But honestly it doesn't matter, unless you're trying to argue some living thing deserves rights or protection. Which right now pretty much no living things do other than the ones that have faces and fur and look like us. The vast majority of life is not even thought about even slightly in these terms. Which is probably a good thing.

>> No.5289313

>>5288038
Yes it does. A protein is DNA based as well but we don't consider that living. is DNA itself considered a living thing?
What you're talking about may apply to insects, amoebas, bacteria even, but not to viruses. They are fundamentally different.

>> No.5289337

>>5288887
How would it replicate then? Viruses cannot exist without living things, as far as we know.
The jump from virus to bacteria is not as small as you think.

>> No.5289358

>>5288932
Our circulatory system is very complex compared to other animals.
For example, most insects do not really have a circulatory system of blood vessels and highways for fluids at all, but a hemocoel which is basically just a cavity filled with fluid. Everything mixes around together in one big gloop. Also many animals don't have blood either in the way that we have blood.
The explanation my zoology professor gave us as to why a circulatory system came about is really long and complex, it would be hard to explain. Just know it also developed around the same time that the heart and lungs (for lack of better word) and kidneys developed, so the basis of it all happened to some worm like creature millions of years ago that all vertebrates have as a common ancestor. It has just grown more complex since then.

>> No.5289387

>>5289245

OPs picture is a T4 bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria. The genes that code for the viral protein coat structure look an awful lot like bacterial proteins. The adhesion mechanisms are similar to bacterial mechanisms, and the cell membrane injection protein looks like bacterial proteins for cell-cell conjugation and plasmid delivery apparati.

Basically, evolutionary theory is that, with quintillions of iterations, partially digested bacteria (perhaps in lysosomes) were ejected from lysing bacterial cells.

Viruses are the evolved functional products of random chance using different scales of intact DNA and RNA of cellular origin.

The human genome is filled with remnants of viral genomes that infected and left traces of itself. Not all of it was useless, and thus, viruses influence evolution across the board as new genes and new mutations. They are simply not "alive" though.

>> No.5289392

>>5288932
It probably started as some kind of non-vascularized, general circulation system in the body cavity. Diffusion can only take nutrients so far, but if you can push liquid around you should be able to aerate your tissue enough that you can get a tiny bit bigger.

Once you have that, liquid pressure is going to preferentially want to find the easiest way to move through the tissue, so you'll see rough channels form. The body can probably aid movement if it evolves cells to line those rough channels.

So now you have a genetic platform that creates lined cell channels throughout the body. Now you can set up a regulatory network so you can express that platform in new tissues and organs.

Over time, those channels get more advanced until you have separate blood vessels, and the physical properties of the blood vessels change depending on whether they have to adapt to coping with strong flow right out the pump or low pressure coming back from the tissues, creating the artery/vein dichotomy.

>> No.5289405

>mfw /sci/ can't get its head around the fact that "life" isn't a strict definition but more of a "choose four out of six items from this list and you're living" system

>> No.5289424

Biologist here.

I would like to introduce the idea of a definition of a living thing from an evolutionary standpoint.

Consider that an animal is born that is completely different from its parent in almost every way. It's mother was a bison who smoked while she was pregnant or something and a retarded fish-like creature came out. Is this considered a living thing? If it survives birth and then grows, most would say yes. But over time this creature almost certainly will not be able to reproduce anything like itself, it will probably have a short life before it dies a painful death.

From an evolutionary perspective, this would never be recorded as living because a living thing doesn't really exist unless it can be defined as a "species". A species is composed of thousands, if not millions of individual organisms all with a fairly similar genetic code that reproduce amongst themselves, compete for resources, and change over time.

So with this in mind, ask, does a virus fit the definition of a species?

>> No.5289466

>>5289424
>I would like to introduce the idea of a definition of a living thing from an evolutionary standpoint.

>wharrgarbl

>So with this in mind, ask, does a virus fit the definition of a species?

A virus does not fit any reasonable definition of a species because it is an individual object. Also, we were talking about the definition of life.

>> No.5289496

>>5289424
>A species is composed of thousands, if not millions of individual organisms all with a fairly similar genetic code that reproduce amongst themselves, compete for resources, and change over time.
That happens every time you're infected with the flu.

>> No.5289536

>>5287947
>biology
>science

let the philosophers give it a shot

>> No.5289574

What is living and what is not-living? A proper scientific or quantitative word would probably be animate and inanimate objects. With this definition we can say viruses are animate and rocks are not. As long as there is a internal cycle of "things" that an object does, it is animated. Now "living things" is a vague philosophical term that isn't defined properly. A more scientific word would be sentience. The ability to experience. Are viruses sentient? Most likely not. Are rocks sentient? Nope. Are humans sentient? Yes. Are plants sentient? Possible, but unknown and accepted to be not sentient from our current "general wisdom". Though general wisdom overtime has proven to be false many times, so we should leave it an open-ended.

>> No.5289579

>>5289358
>>5289392

Thanks for the insight. Never thought /sci/ would have biology guys, as it's mostly math and engineering.

>> No.5289625

>>5289579
There's a couple of us floating around, but we pretty much just stay quiet since the closest /sci/ gets to biology is usually religion troll threads about evolution or slopover from /pol/ about racial genetics.

>> No.5289741
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5289741

>>5289625

>> No.5289774

>>5287930
Just look at that virus schematic. I always thought that viruses were engineered nanobots from a past civilization that was more advanced than we are today. They're probably a type of Von Neumann machine that could not outcompete living organisms, and so it is in equilibrium with other life. Or perhaps, they were engineered by a forgotten civilization as a form of biological warfare, since they can insert their genes into the animal genome. In fact, most of the human genome comes from viral origins, if I remember correctly.

>> No.5289794

>>5288040
Yeah, i think its like this: A rock can break into more rocks, and an organism can divide into others or give birth to others. The rock obeys the conservation of mass because if you have 2 rocks from 1 rock, the 2 rocks have the same mass. But...living things don't obey conservation of mass. Your parents might equal a total of 200 kg, but they might have many children who have a combined mass much greater than this. So, maybe you can use this to define what is alive or not. Therefore, viruses are alive

QED.

>> No.5289858

>>5289774
>humans are dying
>we put remnants of our DNA into viruses
>they carry our DNA into the future of the universe

What if there are aliens locked up in the Viruses and we can clone them back to life?

>> No.5289923

>>5288801
Good job guys. Only one shitposter. Excluding me.

>> No.5289927

>>5289923
>>5289858
I stand corrected....

>> No.5290017

In the end what does it matter if it is classified as living or not. The overall classification of life is ambiguous and leaves a lot to be discussed. Living or not it doesn't matter.

>> No.5290025

>>5289304
>A rock falling and breaking is not reproduction, it is division
So? Cells divide to reproduce. We consider them alive.

>> No.5290031

>>5290017
This. "Life" is an arbitrary concept that humans created to loosely define the actions of various systems.

>> No.5290036

>>5287947
The usual negative arsehole with a superiority complex who just cant his stupid mouth shut when there are questions he finds difficult to understand.

>> No.5290042

>>5290036
But he's right. The term is defined by biologists. They have the final say in what the definition covers, because they are the ones that made the definition.

>> No.5290049

>>5290042
Biology isn't hard science and hence their definitions aren't well defined. The definition of life is a vague term in biology and even more so in general populous. A hardscience notion of life would never come to biology's definition of life.

>> No.5290058

>>5290049
What exactly is your definition of a hard science? And in what way would Biology not be considered a hard science?

>> No.5290082

>>5290058
biology cannot make base predictions. we have yet to bridge the gap between physics and chemistry, while the gap between biology and chemistry is already neatly sealed. since biology has not been very consistent in the last 100 years you can basically toss it in the same bin with psychology. if you want credit, be a biochemist.

and from a biochemistry point the concept of life does not really exist.

>> No.5290098
File: 1.49 MB, 297x198, fasciNATing.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5290098

>>5290082
>mfw this is what people actually believe

>> No.5290149

>>5289337
There are plenty of organisms on Earth that can't reproduce or succeed at all without some other life-form.

>> No.5290159

>>5290098
well can you? what does a hypothetical self-harmonizing molecular positronium gas do to a rat? you'd do tests and build models, but you can't tell anyone jack squat beforehand. and if you get into theoretical biology, which may be an actual science, you'll see that it's actually chemistry, physics and mathematics, which is basically the same thing as chemistry in the first place


so yea biology.

>> No.5290184

>>5290159

>and from a biochemistry point the concept of life does not really exist

Uhh, no. I have no idea from where you even pulled that out of.

>> No.5290229

>>5289794
You didn't use the expression "conservation of mass" like it's usually used.

>> No.5290252

>>5290159
> and if you get into theoretical biology, which may be an actual science, you'll see that it's actually chemistry, physics and mathematics,
That's not true at all. Chemistry and physics are cannot explain the phenomena biology studies. Basic intermolecular interactions can be described using chemical concepts, but once you reduce biological interactions to chemistry and physics you cannot re-deduce biological function. It's a one-way street.

>> No.5290267

>>5289794

Not sure if troll or just stupid..

>> No.5290273

>>5289466
Yes, but we can identify certain types of viruses which are all roughly the same, and evolve much like a species evolves. In almost every practical sense, a virus is like any other species.

Life is defined in many different ways, just as species is defined in many different ways. Even as biologists it's hard for us to say exactly which definition is correct and accepted by everyone.
Though myself and most of us agree, viruses aren't living.

>> No.5290276

>>5289574
a robot is animate, does that make it living?
steam is animate, is it living?
Sentience is hard to quantify.

>> No.5290337

>>5289625
Glad there's another biobro out there.
It's nice because all the math and physics bros don't know jack shit about the complexities of life.
Internet high-five.

>> No.5290341

>>5290276
You're applying faulty logic. The main point of that post was the term "living" is a very vague. Animate and inanimate cannot for certain say what is living or not.

>> No.5290348

>>5290049
This is BS, biology is absolutely a hard science. It requires more scientific rigor than any other hard science too because the complexity and variability of data.

>> No.5290383

>>5290341
I was simply trying to point out that whether or not something moves is a terrible basis to determine if it is living or not. Thus the examples. My logic is not faulty.

>> No.5290394

>>5290337
>brobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobro
brobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobrobro

>> No.5290401

>>5290348
I don't think you can really quantify "scientific rigor".

Biology can be, at times, more complex than physics or chemistry, but that's because there's just so much fucking going on, not because the material is inherently harder. And from a math standpoint, biology is basically stuck in pre-school compared to physics.

Really, there's not much in biology that can't be explained in words; there's certainly nothing like how the deepwoods parts of chemistry and physics need upper-level math just to even start teaching the theory, let alone do experiments in it.

>> No.5290417

>>5290401

Bioinformatics? Systems biology?

How about protein secondary structure prediction? RNA folding? In silico construction of enzymes? Drug discovery and kinetics?

Modern biology is VERY maths heavy.

>> No.5290418

>>5290401
I'm a microbiology senior in college right now. Don't frequent /sci/ much but I don't understand the level of hate of biology here.

I think we all understand that you can't have biology without chemistry and you can't have chemistry without physic and mathematics is the language of physics.
So yeah, things do boil down to math and physics models. BUT - try explaining living organisms using mathematical models - shit just got complicated right?

Biology is an area that requires investigation. The science of biology was formed to make this simpler. Sure, things seem subjective at times and we can't nail everything down all the time but biology continues to make great progress.

>> No.5290478

>>5290418
I'm an environmental engineer, and most of my time is spent on microfabrication and developing nanotechnology. The other parts are spent on spectroscopy and microscopy related to experiments I'm doing with microorganisms. I'll say that one of the most difficult parts of my research, if not "the" most difficult is working with microorganisms. Nothing easy about it (not that a discipline should be judged by difficulty in the first place). Many people here seem to hate it because they think it's easy. I'm sure that macrobiology has its own challenges.

>> No.5290481

>>5290417
>Drug discovery and kinetics?
Nobody really seriously does drug discovery unless you're fishing for citations; it's way easier and cheaper to do screens of potential drugs to look for the effects you want.

And pharmaco-kinetics really isn't as hard as you're making it out to be. The math is pretty trivial.

>Bioinformatics?
Granted, yes, bioinformatics ITSELF is very math-heavy, but generally there's a very wide split between the people who create bioinformatics tools and understand the math behind the algorithms (they're almost always actually CompSci transplants) and the people who use bioinformatics tools for their research (who generally know basic stats and some scripting languages).

>How about protein secondary structure prediction? RNA folding? In silico construction of enzymes?

Okay, yes, these can get really math heavy, but if you're trying to make out like these are representative of biology I really think you're trying to paint the field much nicer than it really is.

Most biologists who aren't working with genomics or ecology barely know how to run anything more complicated than a t-test or a pearson chi-squared. I've known practicing biologists who didn't know how to set up basic ANOVA-family analyses.

>> No.5290500

>>5288038
>They're DNA based life forms like us

Not all of them.

>> No.5290529

>>5290481

>Nobody really seriously does drug discovery unless you're fishing for citations; it's way easier and cheaper to do screens of potential drugs to look for the effects you want.

Ha. Ha. Ha. No.

Drug discovery is very complicated and expensive area. Why do you think there is so much research currently in in silico methods? It could speed up drug discovery substantially, as well as reduce the costs (modern drugs take about 10-15 years from beginning to getting approval and can cost around $2b to develop).

Granted, yes, bioinformatics ITSELF is very math-heavy, but generally there's a very wide split between the people who create bioinformatics tools and understand the math behind the algorithms (they're almost always actually CompSci transplants) and the people who use bioinformatics tools for their research (who generally know basic stats and some scripting languages).

Of course there is a split between people who develop the tools and the people who use them, I am not doubting it. But many biology labs nowadays use their own in-house tools which have been built by having input from both fields. You can't tell a CS to develop a tool without understanding any of the maths behind what you want in the first place. Yes, maybe not all, but you must be able to lay down the fundamentals to him.

Okay, yes, these can get really math heavy, but if you're trying to make out like these are representative of biology I really think you're trying to paint the field much nicer than it really is.

Nothing is "representative" of biology, just like no area of physics is representative of that. I was just pointing out that many biologists work in that field.

If you don't like those examples then just take X-ray crystallography. That is quite math heavy and even nowadays computers can't solve all of the problems on their own, crystallographers have a lot of input.

>> No.5290545

>>5290529

I don't know how I fucked up greentexting so bad.