Towards understanding virus

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Sid_Hatrack
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Towards understanding virus

Post by Sid_Hatrack » Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:46 pm

I have not been following this Corona virus phenomenon closely because I do not intentionally watch main stream media news. However, I am aware that there is a high fear factor in this for many people. In my experience, fear is often high where knowledge is low so gaining knowledge about what you are afraid often helps lower the fear. The following passage from the book “Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal realm” gives a more holistic view of viruses and parasitic relationships than I have seen on the main stream media.





As Trewavas observes, "Information processing, learning, memory, decision making, choice, predictive modeling, associating memory, sensory integration and control of behavior are all aspects of biological intelligence." These capacities are present in every biological organism and that includes viruses.

Viruses creates communities, just as bacteria do. But what is more interesting about viruses is that they act, in a number of circumstances, much like a group of cooperating carnivores such as a pride of lions or wolf pack—or, perhaps more accurately, humans. In fact, seem to "shepherd" their flocks.

Researchers studying emerging viruses have noticed an interesting phenomenon. As more human beings are born, there is a consistent spread of human habitation into once undeveloped eco-ranges. The previously existing environment is removed, houses are built, people move in. The former populations of plants and animals are displaced. However, one of the major things that has been overlooked is that viruses have lived in those regions for a very long time—in a healthy symbiotic balance with their hosts, both plant and animal. It is possible to think of them as an invisible herd or pack species, spread with the same kind density throughout those eco ranges just as deer or birds are. As Frank Ryan describes it...

“The swarm analogy has implications that go beyond the mutational evolution within a single infected [individual]. The "species" swarm is nothing less than the genomic diversity of the entire virus proliferation across the genomic landscape of the entire infected species.”
In other words, in some senses, viruses should be thought of, not as individuals, but as a self-organized whole—a swarm—composed of many, Individual viruses, each with a slightly different genomic structure as an extensive intelligent organism. And that organism? Its ally doesn't like its habitat being destroyed.

Human beings, moving into a previously undisturbed eco-range, represent the introduction of a new predator species. The existing animal groups are displaced, displacing in turn their viral symbionts. Mathematical modeling has found that the relationships of emerging viruses most closely resemble predator-prey relationships. That, in fact, viruses in an eco-range feed on their hosts identically to the way large mammal predators feed on their prey. But in this instance, they don't kill their hosts, they just scavenge nutrients from them, i.e., feed on them. As researchers Villarreal et al. comment, such mathematical models "resemble predator-prey dynamics in which the viruses act as predators on their host prey." Only in certain circumstances do they prey and when they do, the process follows the same predator dynamics that exist in larger carnivores. Frank Ryan comments that;

“The microbes that kill people, particularly those that kill huge numbers in sweeping epidemics, follow, in many ways, the same universal law of predator and prey. It is part of this complex gestalt that balance is shaped by the behavior of the prey. If the prey moves - if it changes, if its numbers increase or decrease, if its ecology alters—the predator must move with it.

And like most predators’ viruses are very, very intelligent. As Ryan yes...

"In a sense every sufferer evolves his or her own strain of virus, and within each sufferer the strain is not a single viral genome, but a swarm of thousands of related genomes, all furiously mutating, metamorphosing, driven by a genomic intelligence the like of which had never been imagined before. Self-regulating, it could speed its own production up or slow it down at will, overwhelming the failing immune system with novelty from week to week, even from day to day. Studies found that there were genes that switched production of virus off or on, others that hugely accelerated the viral assembly line, jacking up production a thousand-fold when the infected cells encountered a stimulatory antigen. There were still others that had the opposite effect, that switched off this positive feedback burst of replication. The more people studied the virus, the more strategically calculating is behavior appeared. In other words, the virus coded itself for long-term survival, during which it could reproduce itself endlessly without necessarily killing huge numbers of host cells.
Again, they don't normally kill their host species. In well-established virus-host relationships, in exchange for a hospitable living environment, the viruses offer certain benefits to the host species, among which is the protection of that host species from external threats. For example, in the case of the simian herpes-B virus, Herpesvirus saimiri.

If a rival species of monkeys begins encroaching on its hosts territory, species. In the new monkey species, the virus will immediately jump species. In the new monkey species, the virus is deadly. It generates an incredibly fast acting cancer, the encroaching species dying from fulminating cancer of the lymphatic system. Within its host species, however, the virus is benign and never causes disease. The viral swarm responds to an encroaching species much as humans do when a competing carnivore begins taking their livestock. Many of the emerging viruses that human beings are encountering as disease organisms are acting similarly for similar reasons.

Portions of the viral swarm, the herd/pack of closely related viruses that live in a particular host species in a specific eco-range, will, in fact, immediately jump species if the integrity of their hosts and eco-range is threatened. Neo-Darwinianists have said that viruses enter new hosts "by accident:' that such jumping is counter to the organism's survival and thus counter to "survival of the fittest" ideology; However, it appears that this is a well-honed and long-standing survival strategy as Frank Ryan comments...

"The attacking virus is programmed to injure and kill, even if in doing so this portion of the swarm sacrifices itself in an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The symbiotic relationship is well served by this sacrifice. This is as important as it is a radically different perception."

Viruses, in fact, show altruistic behavior, just as bacteria do. Swarms are, in actuality a distributed intelligence, a form of neural net spread throughout multiple organisms. And they, like all self-organized systems, act to stabilize and retain their self-organized state. Thus, they protect their ecological territory and their hosts from intrusions of other species.

The world is not a static backdrop across which humans can move, building their suburbs where they will as the only intelligent actors on the planet. They call it the American dream, as George Carlin once put it, because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Attempting to kill off microbial groups because they cause human disease is fraught with peril. And while it is true that the introduction of antimicrobial substances in the millions of tons does stimulate rapid alteration in microbe genomes, that is not the only cause of the genetic innovations. As Yoshida et al. comment, "Mathematical modeling shows that this kind of cryptic dynamic occurs when there is rapid prey or host evolution for traits conferring defense against attack.", In other words, simply enhancing the defense of the prey against its predator—by, for instance, the creation and use of millions of tons of antibiotics—results in immediate alterations in the predators. With bacteria it stimulates rapid evolutionary Innovation—whether they encounter the antibiotics or not—in order to establish predator-prey dynamics. Or as Hilker and Schmitz put it, 'Parasite removal from food webs can have catastrophic effects.
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Re: Towards understanding virus

Post by amanitadreamer » Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:57 am

Sid_Hatrack wrote:
Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:46 pm
I have not been following this Corona virus phenomenon closely because I do not intentionally watch main stream media news. However, I am aware that there is a high fear factor in this for many people. In my experience, fear is often high where knowledge is low so gaining knowledge about what you are afraid often helps lower the fear. The following passage from the book “Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal realm” gives a more holistic view of viruses and parasitic relationships than I have seen on the main stream media.





As Trewavas observes, "Information processing, learning, memory, decision making, choice, predictive modeling, associating memory, sensory integration and control of behavior are all aspects of biological intelligence." These capacities are present in every biological organism and that includes viruses.

Viruses creates communities, just as bacteria do. But what is more interesting about viruses is that they act, in a number of circumstances, much like a group of cooperating carnivores such as a pride of lions or wolf pack—or, perhaps more accurately, humans. In fact, seem to "shepherd" their flocks.

Researchers studying emerging viruses have noticed an interesting phenomenon. As more human beings are born, there is a consistent spread of human habitation into once undeveloped eco-ranges. The previously existing environment is removed, houses are built, people move in. The former populations of plants and animals are displaced. However, one of the major things that has been overlooked is that viruses have lived in those regions for a very long time—in a healthy symbiotic balance with their hosts, both plant and animal. It is possible to think of them as an invisible herd or pack species, spread with the same kind density throughout those eco ranges just as deer or birds are. As Frank Ryan describes it...

“The swarm analogy has implications that go beyond the mutational evolution within a single infected [individual]. The "species" swarm is nothing less than the genomic diversity of the entire virus proliferation across the genomic landscape of the entire infected species.”
In other words, in some senses, viruses should be thought of, not as individuals, but as a self-organized whole—a swarm—composed of many, Individual viruses, each with a slightly different genomic structure as an extensive intelligent organism. And that organism? Its ally doesn't like its habitat being destroyed.

Human beings, moving into a previously undisturbed eco-range, represent the introduction of a new predator species. The existing animal groups are displaced, displacing in turn their viral symbionts. Mathematical modeling has found that the relationships of emerging viruses most closely resemble predator-prey relationships. That, in fact, viruses in an eco-range feed on their hosts identically to the way large mammal predators feed on their prey. But in this instance, they don't kill their hosts, they just scavenge nutrients from them, i.e., feed on them. As researchers Villarreal et al. comment, such mathematical models "resemble predator-prey dynamics in which the viruses act as predators on their host prey." Only in certain circumstances do they prey and when they do, the process follows the same predator dynamics that exist in larger carnivores. Frank Ryan comments that;

“The microbes that kill people, particularly those that kill huge numbers in sweeping epidemics, follow, in many ways, the same universal law of predator and prey. It is part of this complex gestalt that balance is shaped by the behavior of the prey. If the prey moves - if it changes, if its numbers increase or decrease, if its ecology alters—the predator must move with it.

And like most predators’ viruses are very, very intelligent. As Ryan yes...

"In a sense every sufferer evolves his or her own strain of virus, and within each sufferer the strain is not a single viral genome, but a swarm of thousands of related genomes, all furiously mutating, metamorphosing, driven by a genomic intelligence the like of which had never been imagined before. Self-regulating, it could speed its own production up or slow it down at will, overwhelming the failing immune system with novelty from week to week, even from day to day. Studies found that there were genes that switched production of virus off or on, others that hugely accelerated the viral assembly line, jacking up production a thousand-fold when the infected cells encountered a stimulatory antigen. There were still others that had the opposite effect, that switched off this positive feedback burst of replication. The more people studied the virus, the more strategically calculating is behavior appeared. In other words, the virus coded itself for long-term survival, during which it could reproduce itself endlessly without necessarily killing huge numbers of host cells.
Again, they don't normally kill their host species. In well-established virus-host relationships, in exchange for a hospitable living environment, the viruses offer certain benefits to the host species, among which is the protection of that host species from external threats. For example, in the case of the simian herpes-B virus, Herpesvirus saimiri.

If a rival species of monkeys begins encroaching on its hosts territory, species. In the new monkey species, the virus will immediately jump species. In the new monkey species, the virus is deadly. It generates an incredibly fast acting cancer, the encroaching species dying from fulminating cancer of the lymphatic system. Within its host species, however, the virus is benign and never causes disease. The viral swarm responds to an encroaching species much as humans do when a competing carnivore begins taking their livestock. Many of the emerging viruses that human beings are encountering as disease organisms are acting similarly for similar reasons.

Portions of the viral swarm, the herd/pack of closely related viruses that live in a particular host species in a specific eco-range, will, in fact, immediately jump species if the integrity of their hosts and eco-range is threatened. Neo-Darwinianists have said that viruses enter new hosts "by accident:' that such jumping is counter to the organism's survival and thus counter to "survival of the fittest" ideology; However, it appears that this is a well-honed and long-standing survival strategy as Frank Ryan comments...

"The attacking virus is programmed to injure and kill, even if in doing so this portion of the swarm sacrifices itself in an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The symbiotic relationship is well served by this sacrifice. This is as important as it is a radically different perception."

Viruses, in fact, show altruistic behavior, just as bacteria do. Swarms are, in actuality a distributed intelligence, a form of neural net spread throughout multiple organisms. And they, like all self-organized systems, act to stabilize and retain their self-organized state. Thus, they protect their ecological territory and their hosts from intrusions of other species.

The world is not a static backdrop across which humans can move, building their suburbs where they will as the only intelligent actors on the planet. They call it the American dream, as George Carlin once put it, because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Attempting to kill off microbial groups because they cause human disease is fraught with peril. And while it is true that the introduction of antimicrobial substances in the millions of tons does stimulate rapid alteration in microbe genomes, that is not the only cause of the genetic innovations. As Yoshida et al. comment, "Mathematical modeling shows that this kind of cryptic dynamic occurs when there is rapid prey or host evolution for traits conferring defense against attack.", In other words, simply enhancing the defense of the prey against its predator—by, for instance, the creation and use of millions of tons of antibiotics—results in immediate alterations in the predators. With bacteria it stimulates rapid evolutionary Innovation—whether they encounter the antibiotics or not—in order to establish predator-prey dynamics. Or as Hilker and Schmitz put it, 'Parasite removal from food webs can have catastrophic effects.
This is exactly what I did for 10 years LOL . All through the 1990's and still read on it here and there. All of this is fascinating. I wanted to talk with people about it but no one cares!
They are a fascinting group of living things and to be respected. We enter their environment the same way we do other living things and we pay the price for it. They change and evolve rapidly and it's a chance to watch evolution before our eyes. I believe we are starting to learn that our medicines won't ever be the answer and eventually we will start learning to look toward the natural world for remedies. BUT we must stop eating exotic animals. Or even stop going into jungles and environments that are not ours.
Have you read Swarm by Michael Crichton? Have you read much about game theory? If you're looking for more to digest, try those.
When we remove anything from it's web it has catastrophic effects. I taught high school science and my favorite subject was Ecology and Environmental Science. The web of life includes all living things, not just animals and trees like people think. The fungi and the microbes are so important. We are doing all we can to kill this planet and it will always fight back. Did you see my recent video I uploaded on Amanita and Corona? I speak to some of this in the video.
We are so quick to discount viruses and bacteria AND mycellium as unintelligent. I have a very different view of them as do other scientists but we are fringe elements. I want to make a video on the intelligence of mushroom mycellium at some point here soon. I haven't read much on it so it would be all speculation from my own intuition and communion with them. Should be interesting.
This is a great write up. Thank you for it.
The sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me". Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky. ~Sufi
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