Starship Asterisk*

harry wrote:Sputnick Lucky I corrected your name I had D instead of N.

Sputnick wrote:Well Bystander - Sputdick is about all there is that way these days - and even in the good days that kind of thing was always vastly over valued.

Viruses do not have a cell structure (regarded as the basic unit of life), although they do have genes. Additionally, although they reproduce, they do not self-metabolize and require a host cell to replicate and synthesize new products. However, bacterial species such as Rickettsia and Chlamydia are considered living organisms but are unable to reproduce outside a host cell.

Viruses do not have a cell structure (regarded as the basic unit of life), although they do have genes. Additionally, although they reproduce, they do not self-metabolize and require a host cell to replicate and synthesize new products. However, bacterial species such as Rickettsia and Chlamydia are considered living organisms but are unable to reproduce outside a host cell.

harry wrote:Knowing this we look at the fossil evidence and we see that viruses were the first to evolve.

Simple DNA structures.

Viruses have been described as "organisms at the edge of life", but argument continues over whether viruses are truly alive. According to the United States Code, they are considered microorganisms in the sense of biological weaponry and malicious use. Scientists, however, are divided. Things become more complicated as they look at viroids and prions. Viruses resemble other organisms in that they possess genes and can evolve in infected cells by natural selection. They can reproduce by creating multiple copies of themselves through self-assembly.

Viruses do not have a cell structure (regarded as the basic unit of life), although they do have genes. Additionally, although they reproduce, they do not self-metabolize and require a host cell to replicate and synthesize new products. However, bacterial species such as Rickettsia and Chlamydia are considered living organisms but are unable to reproduce outside a host cell.

An argument can be made that accepted forms of life use cell division to reproduce, whereas viruses spontaneously assemble within cells. The comparison is drawn between viral self-assembly and the autonomous growth of non-living crystals. Virus self-assembly within host cells has implications for the study of the origin of life, as it lends credence to the hypothesis that life could have started as self-assembling organic molecules.

If viruses are considered alive, then the criteria specifying life will have to exclude the cell. If viruses are said to be alive, the question could follow of whether even smaller infectious particles, such as viroids and prions, are alive.

A bacteriophage (from 'bacteria' and Greek phagein, 'to eat') is any one of a number of viruses that infect bacteria. The term is commonly used in its shortened form, phage

Macrophages (Greek: "big eaters", from makros "large" + phagein "eat") (mø[1]) are cells within the tissues that originate from specific white blood cells called monocytes. Monocytes and macrophages are phagocytes, acting in both non-specific defense (or innate immunity) as well as specific defence (or cell-mediated immunity) of vertebrate animals. Their role is to phagocytose (engulf and then digest) cellular debris and pathogens either as stationary or mobile cells, and to stimulate lymphocytes and other immune cells to respond to the pathogen.

Recent infrared spectral data have shown that complex organic molecules can form rapidly (over a few thousand years) in the environments around old stars and are abundant in many regions of space. These elements and molecules will likely find their way into new stars and planets as they form from molecular clouds

ABSTRACT: Twenty years ago (King 1978) I proposed the biocosmological thesis that the form of life's origin and evolution is a cosmological interactive process defined in the cosmic symmetry-breaking at the origin of the universe. With the passage of time, the pendulum has shifted from the improbability of life as a random molecular accident to an awareness that central biomolecules may be cosmologically abundant products of the clouds forming young stars leading to an RNA-era in which both catalysis and replication emerged from one cosmologically dervied molecule RNA. . This paper unveils the non-linear quantum foundations of biocosmology as the founding science of life.

kovil wrote:Around 1970 I did a report for school, and picked bacteriophages for the subject. I was quite surprised to read about them, knowing zip before. It blew away the teacher too! Was surprised and pleased to read a great deal more about them today, basically none inbetween then and now.

As it looks like our understanding of medicine will take a big left turn and into a whole new area of understanding from bacteriophages presently, outerspace could have them floating around, or on other planets and moons ? And if so, that makes NASA's concern about bringing them back here or taking ours out there much more understandable.

Just when we think we've got it all figured out . . .

Forgot to say, how bacteriophages look suspiciously like the Magog swarm ships when they punch thru the Andromeda's hull !! LOL

geonuc wrote:Occasionally having non-astronomy pictures was recently addressed in some detail by the forum admins (and the members). Can't seem to find the thread, though.

indiaaditya wrote:You mean that bacterophiles created life? How could they have come to earth? Any comet or equivalent will definitely burn out on entry. So how coyuld they have survived?

brucewilliams wrote:This picture has no reference or proven relationship to astronomy. Why is it the Astronomy Picture of the Day?
There are ample other forums to discuss biological anomalies without putting them in unrelated fields of study.

bystander wrote:

geonuc wrote:What image are you referring to?

I would assume http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080421.html.

APOD: 2008 April 21 - Bacteriophages: The Most Common Life-Like Form on Earth.