Virus = sperm?

www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/virus-sperm

Remember the big storm I created a while back by suggesting that sexual reproduiction was simply an evolution of a process in which viruses informed bacteria?

Okay, more fuel for the fire:

The April Issue of "Discover" asks on the cover, "Are you descended from a virus?" On the last page, if you want to check it out at the newsstand, it writes about viruses as both living and non-living entities. Between "Team Living" and "Team Non Living" the article says:

"Score one for Team Living: Some viruses sneak DNA into a bacterium through its, um,sex appendage, a long tube known as a pilus. If that's not life, what is?"

Also, there is this: "Amoebas turn out to be great places to seek out new viruses. They like to swallow big things and so serve as a kind of mixing bowl where viruses and bacteria can swap genes".

And the more familiar: "Half of all human DNA originally came from viruses, which infected and embedded themselves in our ancestors' egg and sperm cells".

Also: "Most of those embedded viruses are now extinct, but in 2005, French researchers applied fore permission to resurrect one of them...The virus, dubbed Phoenix, was a dud".

And finally: "We are family. Scientists suspect that a large DNA-based virus took up residence inside a bacterial cell more than a billion years ago to create the first cell nucleus. If so, then we are all descended from viruses".

Imagine amoeba becoming mixing bowls for the gene swapping of viruses and bacteria, then incorporating that into a recipe for a more complex multicelled life form that adapted of necessity to its own complexity. You then have the Cambrian, er Cambridge, er, big ass blowup. explosion.

It's then just a matter of time before the complexity of each emergent life form loses its ability to freely swap genes, as bacteria themselves have become part of organisms' cell nucleus. Result, DNA exchange among species using the chromosome zipping and unzipping process to ensure both immunity and necessary adaptation generation to generation.

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• 類是吧 -李老頭.- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/03/2012 postreply 01:38:23