
How Wasps Use Viruses to Genetically Engineer Caterpillars - eggie
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/09/parasitic-wasps-genetically-engineer-caterpillars-domesticated-viruses/405874/?single_page=true
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iamcurious
It seems that every little living thing on earth has an interesting story
around it. One that, in the long run, might increase our quality of life
substantially. Maybe one day we will have crops that infest with viruses their
predators?

It pains me to imagine all the stories that we have already lost. What
impressive feats happened inside the Dodo's digestive system? Or its visual
sensors? Or its virus spreading abilities? But then again, there are already
way more stories that we could ever read, so who knows?

~~~
anti-shill
and in the human ecosystem we also have organic (or pseudo-organic) entities
that exploit and parasitize the human population, not using biological
viruses, but propaganda viruses.

The voter bases of the liberal and conservative political tribes of the USA
are infected with propaganda memes created by large corporations/the media in
order to further the financial interests of the large corporations. But if you
say that, a lot of people will call you a conspiracy theorists.

But it is no more a conspiracy than the wasps using biological viruses to
exploit caterpillars. Just nature in action. And man and his society are also
part of nature.

~~~
oldmanjay
It's more like it's obvious, we all know it, and we all are pretty damned
tired of the content-free repetition because it doesn't advance any
conversation at all.

~~~
anti-shill
you forgot to call me 'edgy'

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olewhalehunter
How _Viruses_ use _Wasps and Caterpillars_ to _Survive_.

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eivarv
Discussion from a couple of days ago (different source):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10237793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10237793)

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hyperion2010
One fun implication of this is that most of our phylogenies derived from
genetics assume little to no lateral gene transfer. In this case we have been
able to trace a subset of genes back to a virus that mediates the transfer.
However this suggests that LGT may be more common than our models suggest.

~~~
A_COMPUTER
[http://genome.cshlp.org/content/24/5/831.full](http://genome.cshlp.org/content/24/5/831.full)

"Widespread and frequent horizontal transfers of transposable elements in
plants"

Observation for example, of horizontal gene transfer between palm tree and
grapevine.

