>>12214174when pre-cellular life was moving out of the primordial soup, they were faced with the problem that they could not replicate outside of those conditions. said life found two ways to approach the problem:
a. create a portable version of the ideal environment
b. go into stasis until the ideal environment is encountered
group a became the basic cellular life, which eventually entered into mutualistic existince with mitochondrial and chloroplast life, creating the eukaryotic cell. group b became viruses, which are parasitic to the cellular life in group a. in early earth life history, once the ideal environment for life no longer existed outside of cells, all life that could not replicate within a cell would cease to exist. mitochondria, chloroplasts, and early viruses would have adapted to entering nuclear cells very early on, before they had adapted effective defense mechanisms for keeping shit out. where mitochondria and chloroplasts ended up beneficial to the cell and stuck around, viral life ended up being destructive, so the only cellular life that could survive would have adapted to keep them out, thus creating an evolutionary arms race. on top of this, viruses would have been heavily adapting to the parasitic existence; any need for cell structures or means of replication were dead weight. viral life without them would be more successful, especially those with the capability to mimic and manipulate the safeguards cells had evolved to keep shit out, so the shitload of DNA/RNA responsible for survival and replication would be stripped down and lost.
