
Viruses Can Scatter Their Genes Among Cells and Reassemble - furcyd
https://www.quantamagazine.org/viruses-can-scatter-their-genes-among-cells-and-reassemble-20190521/
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dmitryf
It is quite interesting, but to offer a counterpoint to the article posted, it
seems that its importance is inflated (as can be expected. The actual paper is
slightly less fantastical
[https://elifesciences.org/articles/43599](https://elifesciences.org/articles/43599)
and even that is embellished compared to the current understanding of
multipartite viruses according to

[https://medium.com/@devang/overstating-results-elife-and-
dis...](https://medium.com/@devang/overstating-results-elife-and-distributed-
viruses-f03d7c162505) and its citations.

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pjettter
I like mimetics.

I'm not a distributed database expert.

But I'm wondering: is this analogous to sharding? Not really, I guess.
Eventual consistency? Not really, I guess.

Is it: sharding + replication + "ordering" => Eventual consistency?

What do we have in tech that behaves like this?

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JakeKalstad
The way p2p torrents work to some degree? One node can draw on surrounding
nodes to retrieve smaller portions of the full data.

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mogadsheu
It’s pretty amazing that we’re capable of identifying behavior like this.

They’re like little DNA paratroopers behind enemy lines

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stevenwoo
There are two other living combinations that we did not figure out til
recently, one involving sea life and the other involving lichen (in case you
missed them): general public:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-
shel...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-shellfish-
gene/558131/) source:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191779/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191779/)

general public: [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-
gu...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-guy-from-a-
montana-trailer-park-upturned-150-years-of-biology/491702/)

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mehrdadn
It's really eerie how similar biological viruses are to computer viruses. Even
though that's obviously why they transferred the name, I feel like you still
wouldn't expect _quite_ such a similarity...

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pizza234
Multipartite viruses actually don't work like that. The difference is here:

> researchers realized that a [biological] virus could be composed of two or
> more independent pieces, all of which were vital for infection

multipartite computer viruses are monolithic; when they infect a boot sector,
if there is not enough space, additional segments of the virus are stored in
other parts of the disk (eg. masked as bad sectors), but it's still a single
logical unit.

It would certainly be an interesting idea for malware to break into
independent pieces in separate logical locations (boot, files, etc.), but
that's not how multipartite viruses traditionally work (or worked; I'm
referring to DOS viruses).

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oldman123456789
Perhaps unrelated. Could biophotons be connected to this in some way?

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toby-
I think you're misunderstanding what a biophoton is?

Biophotons are just regular old photons produced by a living being (biological
system). I'm not sure how they could be relevant, here.

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oldman123456789
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4267444/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4267444/)

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toby-
Oh, interesting! I wasn't aware of this research. I would be surprised if this
were connected, but a fascinating idea nevertheless; I wonder if anybody has
discussed a potential connection?

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ryanthedev
This is due to [https://youtu.be/s86-Z-CbaHA](https://youtu.be/s86-Z-CbaHA)

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gilbertmpanga12
They are ninjas... Isn't this phenomena similar to the way biomarkers from
antibodies work?

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Jonathanks
This is amazing. Is it like MapReduce, but for virus replication and
transmission?

