Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!iuvax!silver!chiaravi From: chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Lucius Chiaraviglio) Newsgroups: sci.bio Subject: Re: The Virus Summary: By definition, viruses cannot have been the first life Keywords: obligate parasitism Message-ID: <2776@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> Date: 3 Dec 88 20:59:29 GMT References: <1491@murdu.Oz> <22882@beta.lanl.gov> <22884@beta.lanl.gov> Reply-To: chiaravi@silver.UUCP (Lucius Chiaraviglio) Organization: Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Indiana University, Bloomington Lines: 22 In article <22884@beta.lanl.gov> dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison) writes: |In Article <1491@murdu.Oz>, Sam@murdu.Oz (Sam Ganesan) Writes: |> The Virus Was The First To Live, |> Or Lean In That Direction; Now We Give |> Lend Our Peculiar Tone To Our Death Knells. |> -Michael Newman | |What I forgot to mention is that it is unbelievely unlikely that |viruses came first; are there any which are not obligate |parasites? By definition, viruses are obligate parasites, so they cannot live until they have some life form to live on. The only way to get around this would be to have someone create the equivalent of a concentrated cell extract to grow the virus in (aaacckkphhh!) without using cells to create it and without themselves being alive. -- | Lucius Chiaraviglio | ARPA: chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu BITNET: chiaravi@IUBACS.BITNET (IUBACS hoses From: fields; INCLUDE RET ADDR) ARPA-gatewayed BITNET: chiaravi%IUBACS.BITNET@vm.cc.purdue.edu Alt ARPA-gatewayed BITNET: chiaravi%IUBACS.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu