Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses

The idea that viruses are self-contained entities separate from the organisms they infect is an artifact of the human mind&#x27;s power-saving system of modelling the world in terms of functional-decomposition. Viruses are non-living extraorganism messages crucial as a source of novelty in evolution.<p>Nevertheless, it would be nice to find cures for them.

The statement &quot;There are fundamental differences between viruses and vesicles: Viruses can replicate and vesicles cannot&quot; seems either paraphrased or dumbed down. Viruses can be replicated by cells, but they certainly cannot themselves replicate. And it&#x27;s literally that kind of nitpicking that keeps science on track.

It&#x27;s mindblowing that we can now directly image these vesicles <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC4448148&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC4448148&#x2F;</a>

Apologies if I got this from HN, as I can’t remember the source, but the video halfway down this page shows the complexity of viral replication:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;observations&#x2F;watch-the-life-cycle-of-hiv-in-colorful-new-detail&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;observations&#x2F;watch-the-...</a><p>The article hints at some of the same mechanisms for extracellular vesicles. If that’s the case then maybe they are more closely related than outwardly expressed in the copy.

I strongly recommend &quot;A Planet of Viruses&quot; by Carl Zimmer<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.press.uchicago.edu&#x2F;ucp&#x2F;books&#x2F;book&#x2F;chicago&#x2F;P&#x2F;bo22228819.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.press.uchicago.edu&#x2F;ucp&#x2F;books&#x2F;book&#x2F;chicago&#x2F;P&#x2F;bo222...</a><p>There are viruses that enter a host, merge with its DNA, replicate along with it for generations just like &quot;normal&quot; DNA. Eventually, it can &quot;wake up&quot;, cut itself out of the host genes, and start replicating as a virus again.<p>Some of our DNA is apparently made out of viruses that did this and got stuck.<p>The model that emerges from consideration of recent discoveries is something like, bacteria and viruses form a single global organism that is the primary resident of this planet (by mass, by throughput, etc.)

I’m no biologist but this seems to blow a lot of things wide open.<p>Since these vesicles resemble viruses, is it possible for them to be a form of organism-to-organism communication? Accidental, or intentional?<p>Might there be pathogens that MITM vesicles en route? Rip them open and plant another message inside, and send them along?

&gt; More recently, however, scientists discovered that cells could package their molecular information in what are known as extracellular vesicles.<p>Seems like cells then need some type message-response mechanism. It could be that there&#x27;s an incidental minmax game happening at a cellular level, leading to types of intelligence that we don&#x27;t understand at all but maybe can be modeled.<p>I think this creates incredible disruption opportunities for drugs and healthcare if AI can augment the intelligence of a cell in the long term.

The article describes vesicles as a sort of language, I always thought of them as a cellular routing mechanism.<p>Whatever they are, I think they&#x27;re super interesting. I named one of my routing libraries after a related organelle: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jdonaldson&#x2F;golgi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jdonaldson&#x2F;golgi</a>

Imagine how cool a story it would be if viruses were just a weapon developed by intelligent microscopic life. Relics of an ancient war who&#x27;s history is written in the telomeres of our DNA in an encoding which we cannot decipher.

So... cancer is to tissue as viruses are to cell messaging?

This is obvious.