I’ll try to keep this short.
For years, viruses have both fascinated and completely terrified me. I understand that bacteria are little itty bitty simple organisms. Makes sense, like when you learn about your own cells in biology class.
But a virus? From what I’ve read, they aren’t alive. They just go around hoping to get inside of you so they can hijack your cells, cause mayhem and potentially kill the host that’s keeping its cycle going.
Where did they come from? How can they not have a full life cycle on their own? Seemingly no purpose, but still exist. How did they start out? I know no life form has a ‘true purpose’ because we’re all lucky to just be here but, there are pollinators, predators to keep prey numbers in check. Organisms that work together to both benefit. Then there are mindless viruses that just exist and if you inhale them, they mess you up. Why?
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Bacteria actually have a “virus-like” mechanism of communication – they use it to send signals to nearby bacteria, and also as a poor’s man sexual reproduction – a bacteria just sends a part of its DNA to another bacteria, expecting it to just insert it into genetic code.
While we can’t know for sure, it is easy to imagine that that mechanism could give rise to viruses – some newly mutated “selfish gene” hijacked that mechanism to send everyone copies of itself.
As for their “purpose” (ecological role) – you can consider them predators. They just eat their prey from inside.
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