[teaspoons]

The idea that viruses are self-contained entities separate from the organisms they infect is an artifact of the human mind's power-saving system of modelling the world in terms of functional-decomposition. Viruses are non-living extraorganism messages crucial as a source of novelty in evolution.

Nevertheless, it would be nice to find cures for them.

[stephengillie]

It's as though the vesicles are email, and viruses are spam.

Previously on HN:

800 million viruses fall onto every square meter of Earth every day. They kill 20% of bacterial life every day. [0]

Video simulation of HIV infecting a cell and reproducing. [1]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982396

[noonespecial]

Worse than spam. They're like that chain email all your relatives kept forwarding you about Bill Gates giving you a trip to Disney World if you sent it on to 10 other people.

[derefr]

Viruses are memes. Something that a cell hears, and then can't stop repeating.

[ajuc]

If the messages between cells are e-mail, then viruses are computer viruses. The analogy is almost perfect - it's information that uses security holes to cause the host to produce and send copies of it.

[stephengillie]

And eventually the computer explodes, spreading email spam everywhere. Oh, wait.

[divs1210]

Just realised 'viral meme' is a redundant phrase.

[fjsolwmv]

Vesicles are RPCs, and viruses are... Viruses. That's why informatics stole the word "virus".

[mannykannot]

We need other organisms to synthesize certain vital nutrients (not to mention free oxygen) for us. Does this mean that it is pointless to consider ourselves self-contained entities?

The 'inividualistic' feature of viruses is their genome, which is what gets replicated when they take over a cell, and which is subject to evolution itself, not just an agent in the evolution of 'true' organisms.

[nabla9]

It's not an artifact of the human mind.

Organism's genes (and phenotype) that is transmitted sexually are easy to separate from viruses and bacteria. Of course there is some mixing, like retroviruses, but the distinction is not artificial.

[teaspoons]

viruses transmitted within species could be viewed as part of their host's genotype, regardless of whether their genomes are incorporated into the germ-line. When you catch a cold for instance, you have particles of another human's body inside you replicating

[verelo]

It’s an interesting point. Having no medical / bio knowledge, is argue that from a logical perspective it could easily go both ways. 1) we model them to talk because we do 2) we model them not to talk because we don’t recognize their form of talk.