[afraidfortherepublic]

“parasitic parasites”? Who wrote this twaddle?

[neverdem]

micro - virophage! ping

Resolve A DOI Name

The DOI for the first citation worked like a charm if you want to read the abstract. Save that Resolve A DOI Name website if you don't have a similar website already.

[allmendream]

“So nat’ralists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller fleas that bite ‘em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.” Jonathan Smith

Correct. Other than the ad infinitum part. There is, after all, a limit (so far) in that it has to be DNA or RNA that carries the code to make the molecular machines that reproduce the DNA or RNA code.

But a virophage is just.... wow.

A virus is about as striped down simple as anything that could possibly said to be alive could be. It is a protein package meant to dock with and inject DNA or RNA into a living cell, where that DNA or RNA codes for viral proteins and get replicated and they get assembled ‘Frankenstein's monster style’ and burst out to infect other living cells.

This thing gets inside another virus? Doesn't it at some point have to infect a living cell in order to copy itself?

[allmendream]

“The hosts of all three known virophages belong to a group of giant viruses known as nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDV). “NCLDV viruses have large and complex genomes that allow them to incorporate the smaller virophages, something smaller viruses may not be able to do,” says Desnues.”

So I guess it works like this. These giant viruses infect Zooplankton in the lake and these virophages have protein shells to dock with and inject their “code” into the giant virus and get incorporated into the viral genome.

When the infected virus (infected by a smaller virus) infects a Zooplankon and reproduces - it reproduces WITH IT - the little sucker that will infect uninfected virus.

All this reproducing of the ‘virophage’ during its own infection of Zooplankton really messes up the virus - and allows the Zooplankon to thrive more than it would if the virus went unchecked.

..............................................................................wow...............................................that is CRAZY!!!!!!!!!

[crazydad]

The Thing. Que Kurt Russell.

[JoeProBono]

[The Sons of Liberty]

“parasitic parasites”

You don't have to go all the way to Antarctica to find parasitic parasites - check out DC.

[Sergio]

If cancer is a virus as some suggest...

[bert]

-——a new virophage — a virus that attacks viruses. ——

If I were a dualist, a believer in the ying and the yang, good and evil , black and white, then I would think “but of course”

For an evil virus, there has to be a good antivirus. That is just the way things are.

[wildbill]

Save me a glop to insert into my computer.

[ApplegateRanch]

“So nat’ralists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller fleas that bite ‘em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.”
J. Swift