Viruses, as I understand them, are basically just strands of DNA that happen to interact in a certain way when they come in contact with live replications. Could they, then, form simply in the process of animal corpses decaying, desiccating and blowing in the wind?
I suppose that we all in varying degrees depending upon our environments, must breathe a few of these particles every day. Wouldn’t it be inevitable that we’d (we, as a species, I mean) occasionally run into one that would survive our various systems and be close enough to our own strands to borrow a segment and replicate?
My basic question is this: Does proper disposal of roadkill, food waste, and especially human remains help prevent the interaction of new viruses with the population?
Obviously we find many viruses that make their first contact with farm animals, and then find their way to us, But these crowded operations are often rife with dead animals that don’t get cleaned up quickly, and are not always far removed from the slaughter houses.
Is it not the farms, but the abattoirs and waste piles we should be watching most carefully?
Viruses aren’t just DNA, but DNA enclosed in a protein container that the DNA itself encodes for, and which includes receptors for attaching to the cell membranes of host cells.
Now, new viruses just might, for all I know, originate as you describe, but it’s far more common for them to be the continuation of the line of some already-existing virus.
This is a pretty weird and wild idea. Viruses are fairly complex organisms that have evolved over a long period of time. They require live host cells to multiply. Ancient origins of viruses discovered
*"New research has found that many of the viruses infecting us today have ancient evolutionary histories that date back to the first vertebrates and perhaps the first animals in existence. "
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Viruses are not ‘spontaneously generated’ from dead matter, and there is no mechanism whereby they could be.
Viruses cannot “form randomly”, they are highly evolved machines with the propagate their genetic information and transmit it from one cell to the other, from one organism to the other, and usually very specific as to their host organism. However, where humans and animals live close together, or humans com into close contact with the flesh an blood of the cadavers of diseased animals, viruses can occasionally jump the species boundary. For some types of viruses, in a cell infected at the same time by two strains of related, but different viruses, the two viruses can exchange genetic information and thereby give rise to new viruses. The influenza viruses are well known to do this - this is why swine flu or avian flu is thought to be so dangerous: By recombining with human flu strains they might become both highly infective to humans (as the human influenza viruses are), and escape the human immune system’s knowledge of how to fight human influenza viruses.
I am aware and agree that existing virus strains mutate and evolve, and were doing so long before there were humans or even simians, possibly before there vertebrates.
I am asking specifically about the possible formation of new viruses, and how that might occur in today’s environment.
Thank you. Recombination and mutation are topics I’m well familiar with. Do you know of a good site where I could learn more about virus anatomy (or is structure a better word)? I’ve got a big knowledge hole there, it seems. What else is there to them besides a simple strand of DNA/RNA?
Come to think of it, I was given the same explanation of Prions, only that they are much smaller strands than viruses. Is there more to them as well? Any recommendations as to where I can learn more about their structure?
I really have googled this myself, I promise! I’m having no luck at all.
Is it theoretically possible? Sure. Mix up a bunch of random organic goop, and stir for a while, and quite a lot of things could theoretically come out of the random interactions. And a carcass is a bit more than random organic goop-- it’s already got strings of RNA and proteins that fit in cell receptors and so forth. But don’t hold your breath on a functioning virus appearing any time soon. Even if you’re God and can hold your breath for a few trillion universe lifetimes.
Has it happened at least once? Well, kinda. After all, the first virus came from some random accident in a bunch of organic goop. But that first virus was certainly nothing like current ones, which have been optimized by millions or billions of generations of natural selection.
Is it something to worry about, or consider as a possible explanation for something in the real world? No. See the ‘don’t hold your breath’ above.
In addition to the genetic material, viruses contain a protein capsid and, in some cases, an additional envelope consisting of a lipid membrane with embedded proteins.
You can look at the Virus Particle Explorer (http://viperdb.scripps.edu) to look at the structure of the virus capsid of icosahedral viruses.
The protein part not only protects the genetic material and keeps it together, it also allows the virus to dock to specific structures on the host cell surface and to transport the genetic material across the cell membrane.
Some types of Bacterophages are particularly cool: They are like miniature syringes that recognize the right type of host bacteria with their tail fibers and inject the DNA in their head under pressure.
Prions are different from viruses in that they do not contain any genetic material. They are proteins/protein fragments that can misfold and form a specific type of aggregate called amyloid. In that respect, they behave more like crystallization seeds than like viruses: They are entirely dependent on the presence of the same or very similar protein sequence already being present in the host. They cause the compatible host protein to change its fold from the normal, usually monomeric form to interact with and extend the prion aggregate.