/sci/ - Science & Math » Thread #11518153

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Anonymous Tue 31 Mar 14:32:41 2020 No.11518153 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>11518158 >>11518187 >>11518201

Is/could there be a virus that is beneficial to the host?

Surely a good evolutionary strategy would be to some way improve the health of an organism ensuring the virus is transmitted to a maximum amount of hosts? Has this ever happened?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 31 Mar 2020 14:35:44 No.11518158 Report

Quoted By:

>>11518153
Maybe, I know ecoli help digest but that's bacteria. Maybe something similar with a virus.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 31 Mar 2020 14:37:10 No.11518159 Report

Quoted By:

Yes, there are such viruses.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 31 Mar 2020 14:43:42 No.11518172 Report

Quoted By:

>In work published in Nature in 2014, Cadwell first showed that MNV can be a positive: infecting germ-free mice, which often develop with abnormal intestinal morphology, with different strains of MNV could improve some of the animals’ structural and immunological deficits. The virus also appeared protective against chemically induced damage and pathogenic Citrobacter rodentium infections. “If you infect germ-free mice with murine norovirus, that induces a number of beneficial changes in the gut that are very similar to commensal bacteria,” Neil says. But unlike those beneficial bacteria, the benefits of the virus appeared to be mediated through type-1 interferon (IFN-1), a protein involved in regulating activity of the immune system.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 31 Mar 2020 14:52:28 No.11518187 Report

Quoted By:

>>11518153
You could engineer a retrovirus to insert beneficial genes into a host organism. Nature's nanomachines son.
Not to mention that viruses can help with lateral gene distribution between species (replication error of virus in host A picks up some of its D/RNA, the strain infects host B and another replication error leaves a bit of host A's hitchhiker DNA in the cells of host B).
I also vaguely recall some article about the relationship of amoebas and macroviruses.
The problem is viruses can easily mutate and go from a benign strain to a nasty one in only a few steps.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 31 Mar 2020 14:57:27 No.11518201 Report

Quoted By: >>11518210

>>11518153
With my limited biology knowledge, I would imagine that the way that viruses (I don't know about retroviruses) reproduce makes this very rare, since a virus has to take over and mutate a cell in order to get it to make more viruses, and so the host will automatically try to fight against that to protect their cells. Fighting this off takes energy, so is generally going to negatively affect the host.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 31 Mar 2020 15:03:24 No.11518210 Report

Quoted By:

>>11518201
That’s only lytic viruses, lysogenic viruses just integrate somewhere and stay quiet until they detect its time to strike. Mout herpes is like that.
There’s no reason the quiet phase couldn’t be beneficial, especially if the pytic phase is more subtle than dermal blisters.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 31 Mar 2020 15:12:55 No.11518241 Report

Quoted By: >>11518246

Yes and over millions of years they've injected themselves into 60% of our 'junk DNA'.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 31 Mar 2020 15:14:04 No.11518246 Report

Quoted By:

>>11518241
>60% of our 'junk DNA'.
but have they improved health or fitness in anyway or just hitching a free ride

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