Submitted 11 hours ago by bees@sh.itjust.works to [deleted]
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/86a3f1a2-76fd-4cf9-84d4-f67349d79f84.jpeg
One of the theories how organisms switched from RNA to DNA is due to viruses. Viruses have a pretty wild range of their genetic diversity. Single strand DNA, double strand DNA, positive sense single strand RNA, negative sense single strand RNA, double strand RNA. We’ve also probably got viruses as a permanent part of our genome from some ancestor species.
I think they’re pretty cool. Also, they do respond to outside stimuli, otherwise they’d be completely inert.
We’ve also probably got viruses as a permanent part of our genome from some ancestor species.
We definitely have viruses as a permanent part of our genome. A type of herpes virus is present in the DNA of all living things descended from bony fishes
Mammals wouldn’t have a chorioallantoic placenta at all if not for a virus integrated into our genome. Mapping when in evolution the genes responsible for placental development was my first participation in scientific research, so I love this topic.
Also, they do respond to outside stimuli, otherwise they’d be completely inert.
Do they actually respond? Or is it the external stimuli responding to them?
They respond because they have to do things like inject the DNA into the organism once it latches on to whatever on the cell surface. That doesn’t occur in the host, it occurs in the virus.
Viruses are nanomachines.
Change my mind.
Frankly, all life and life-adjacent things on this planet are either nanomachines or scalable nanomachines.
One might call those scaled up nanomachines “machines”.
I will forever choose to die on the hill that tumblr humor is not funny
then die
Pretty sure those “horrible little scalawags” play some pretty crucial roles in the human microbiome…
In the same way that the mafia plays a crucial role in the Italian mafia government. They’re still a bunch of dicks, even if they’re working for us. Move ‘em 2 millimeters in the wrong direction and you’ll have a bad time
Move ‘em 2 millimeters in the wrong direction and you’ll have a bad time
Are you referring to getting, I dunno, yogurt in places outside the digestive tract?
My understanding was that gut bacteria play a pretty crucial (beneficial) role in overall health, not to mention the whole gut-brain stuff.
“Go back to where you were born, go back to nothing, homunculus”
TootSweet@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Who’s going to tell them about prions?