There are still many unsolved mysteries between humans about viruses, among which the virus that confuses scientists the most can be said to be a philosophical question. That's where the virus comes from? Where will it go?
now has one of the most extensive scientific controversies about viruses. Virus, is it a living body? Or is it alive?
You said it is right, but it is really too small. The virus is smaller than the cell. The structure of the virus is also very simple. It only has a shell of protein , which is a genetic material inside. The key is that the virus cannot metabolize itself, nor can it grow and replicate independently, and it depends on specific host cells.
If it is not a creature, it is so smart.
The virus under the microscope also has feet and head. When it invades cells, it will directly grasp the cells with its feet and inject its own genetic material into it. When the virus invades the cell, it will also disguise variously, deceive the cell's original mechanism, invade and seize control step by step, tamper with the host's dna, and then start a large amount of self-replication, and finally break through the cell. You say it is not alive, how is this possible?
The current mainstream scientific saying is that viruses are organisms on the edge of life, and humans therefore treat viruses independently from the physical realm of organisms.
Since the virus is so powerful, people naturally want to know where it comes from? Although the virus was discovered by humans in the past 100 years, it is certain that the virus must have been born much earlier.
For example, there is a small town in northern Mexico called Naika . Here is the world's largest crystal cave , which is more than 300 meters deep. The cave is filled with various huge linear crystals. Scientists once sampled them in the pits of the crystal cave, and later analyzed them. There are at most 200 million viruses in the water.
is visible, the virus is actually very ancient, so how did it originate? This problem has been plaguing the scientific community for a long time. Because the virus is too small, fossils can not be found like other organisms.
can only be used to speculate on viruses through other evidence. There is no specific conclusion so far, that is, there are three situations according to the order of primary and secondary relationship between viruses and cells.
The first type is viruses called self-original theory, which means that before the emergence of ancient Earth cells, viruses originated from organic macromolecules first. After all, the structure of viruses is too simple, and it seems that it makes sense to be born in a state of no life.
The second type is called degeneration theory. That is to say, cells are born first, and then viruses are born in cells. For example, there may be some small cells that originally parasitize in large cells. Later, the small cells degenerate, retaining only the genetic material and shell, forming a virus.
The third situation is that it is born at the same time, which is the so-called co-evolution theory. When
was born, the virus evolved along with it, and then continued to this day. Perhaps on earth, humans will never be able to solve this mystery about the origin of the virus.
Some scientists even turned their attention to outer space. For example, nasa has always been worried about the pollution of outer space microorganisms . In the 1960s, when US moon landing first came back, they let Apollo astronauts isolate and observed for several weeks. In 2018, Nasa participated in and published a paper to warn humans that there may be a large number of viruses in outer space.
In 2000, there were two scientists in the UK who believed that the virus came from outer space. They said that comet , , flying through the Earth's atmosphere, would leave some space dust, and there might be some viruses in this dust.
So what is the ultimate purpose of the virus? The debate on this issue is very large. First of all, what people believe is that viruses, like other organisms, are ultimately aimed at reproduction and survival.
In terms of population and species, viruses are actually the most successful on Earth. First of all, its footprints are spread all over the earth, spanning mountains and seas, and also traveling through crowds of people.
There are 100 billion viruses in a liter of seawater. The total number of viruses in the global oceans may be as many as 10 to the power of 31. There are more than 1 million viruses in just one kilogram of marine sediment. There are only more than 1.5 million known organisms on earth.
can also be explained as another thing, that is, the virus has reached a certain balance between the host in the long run, because the virus cannot kill all its qualities, and in this way, it will die by itself.
So in this way, it seems that the virus still has memory, and it can adjust its toxicity in advance. For example, the previous wave of sars has a high death rate and very few infections. This time, the new coronavirus seems to have learned a lesson. It doesn’t have that many, but it may also be another explanation for causing more people to be infected, that is, the virus is actually higher than that of humans.
Some people also say that virus is the end of life. This is actually easy to understand, because the virus makes people sick? If you get sick, you will die, and your life will end. In fact, viruses are indeed the greatest possibility that all human beings can perish.
There is another saying that fantasy is that viruses are the punishment given to humans by God. For example, when AIDS appeared, many people believed that this was God's indecision in punishing human behavior and destroying the balance of nature. For example, when you go to eat bat , God lets the virus infect people.
Scientific explanation: viruses are actually the origin of all things. People have discovered that after the virus invades the host cell, some gene fragments will remain in it and will remain forever. For example, in the human genes, it has been found that the genes of about thousands of viruses remain in our bodies, and the scale is very large.
Some genes from viruses may sometimes help the birth of human beings, and even achieve some of the most important evolutions. For example, about 100 million years ago, the ancestors of mammals were infected by a virus, and its DNA would cause the body to form a special protein, which ultimately helped the formation of placenta .
It can be said that without this virus, there would be no birth of fetal animals, including humans. The atmospheric environment on our earth is also related to viruses. The algae in the ocean on the earth and the bacteria that can photosynthesis provide half of the oxygen on the earth. Science has proved that the function of seaweed can release oxygen through photosynthesis has a lot to do with it being infected by the virus and retaining the virus genes.
Scientists studied the celadian in the ocean, which is very widely distributed and found that there is a very important protein gene in its DNA, which is derived from viruses. Later, scientific estimates that the oxygen brought to the earth by viral genes can account for as much as 1/10 of the total global oxygen.
From another perspective, viruses really play a very important role in the birth of human beings.
virus, the word we translated in Chinese is not particularly good because it is too negative. In fact, the word virus virus in English comes from Latin . It actually has two meanings: one is the venom of a snake, and the other is the semen of a man. It can be said that it can not only destroy life, but also create life.
So virus, it is the starting point of life and the end point of life. From amplified perspective, life forms may also be viruses.
