{"id":2215,"date":"2014-03-05T11:28:41","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T16:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/?p=2215"},"modified":"2014-03-05T11:28:41","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T16:28:41","slug":"giant-viruses-and-virophages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2014\/03\/05\/giant-viruses-and-virophages\/","title":{"rendered":"Giant viruses and virophages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Viruses Reconsidered<br \/>\nThe discovery of more and more viruses of record-breaking size calls for a reclassification of life on Earth.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.the-scientist.com\/\/?articles.view\/articleNo\/39244\/title\/Viruses-Reconsidered\/\">http:\/\/www.the-scientist.com\/\/?articles.view\/articleNo\/39244\/title\/Viruses-Reconsidered\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Quite interesting to me as a biochemist.  So much has changed since I was in school, I need all new books!  I was particularly intrigued by the idea of the virophages or viruses that attack viruses.  There probably isn&#8217;t anything on earth that is immune from attack, probably a <a href=\"http:\/\/sol-system.com\/koxenrider\/bok\/ydie.html\">necessity of life<\/a>.  I am also intrigued by the idea of a fourth branch (in addition to eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus), prokaryotes (cells without a nucleus) and archea, the latter a relatively recent addition and used to be included with prokaryotes).  It actually makes more sense to me that classification should be so difficult.  I expect that millions, likely billions or even trillions of replicating &#8216;organisms&#8217; arose more or less at the same time in the evolution of life on Earth; it makes sense that the successful ones would borrow successful bits from one another.  Indeed, I suspect additional chemistries evolved as well (i.e., not DNA\/RNA\/protein based), but due to the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Giant_impact_hypothesis\">formation of the moon<\/a> only a few (or single!) chemistry was able to survive the impact (I believe I have seen models that posit that even though the entire surface of the Earth would have been molten, there exists a few places that would have been cool enough to sustain life).  Alternatively, during the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Late_heavy_bombardment\">late heavy bombardment<\/a> the competing chemistries may have lost out (models are quite convincing that there were places even on the surface where life might have survived).<\/p>\n<p>Our world is so much more interesting than mundane politics makes out; I wish people would be more interested in this and less about gay marriage, immigration or racism (sometimes life is happier with rose colored glasses on).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Viruses Reconsidered The discovery of more and more viruses of record-breaking size calls for a reclassification of life on Earth. http:\/\/www.the-scientist.com\/\/?articles.view\/articleNo\/39244\/title\/Viruses-Reconsidered\/ Quite interesting to me as a biochemist. So much has changed since I was in school, I need all new books! I was particularly intrigued by the idea of the virophages or viruses that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2014\/03\/05\/giant-viruses-and-virophages\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Giant viruses and virophages&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthcare","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2216,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions\/2216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}