2011/7/14 Ken Whistler <[email protected]>: > So a virus is to life, kind of like a control code is to a character. ;-)
Viri are undoubtly part of life because they have an identifiable and autonomous genome, that is replicatable (even if it requires cooperation in an infected cell). But there are other kind of "sub-life" entities. Just consider ribosomes: they also have an identifiable genome (transmitted with the female gamete in sexual reproduction, or just by sharing their diffusion in their reproduction by division of their host cell). There are other non-conventional forms, and notably the "prion" which is much more similar to what a control character is to a character. In fact it is a special variant of proteic form conformance, much like a "character variant", i.e. the association of a character and a variant selector in the UCS space, because it has exactly the same genome as the non-prionic protein. But as it is replicatable with this unconventional form and effectively identifiable by its distict properties (for example the prion that cause the "mad cow" disease is hydrophobic, only because the hydrophyle action sites are no longer accessible in its folded form). The fact that this form is replicatable is that other hydrophic action sites are enabled instead, which causes other proteins to be produced, similar to toxins, that will reinforce their presence to conformize other initial proteins that normally would adopt the non-prionic form if there was no such proliferation of this. You may also ask ourself if ases (hormones) are life. As they directly affect the reproduction/replication of the genome and condition their life or death, and can be produced by genes shared across a lot of species, you could also say that life starts at the point of the gene, instead of the full genome. In my opinon, a control character is to a character much more like an isolated gene (or the generated protein) compared to a normal character that represents a lot of variants (including glyph variants). A protein itself is not life by itself because it has no genomic structure by itself, even if it may have several variants sharing the same originating genomic structure (the gene) : the various ADN or ARN forms of these proteins, plus their (possibly multiple) stable folding states, and their excitation states (caused by the presence of other chemical or proteic environments, or by radiations and/or temperature); all these variants may be similar to what are glyphs to the abstract characters. And for me, a conventional living cell or virus is much like what we call a grapheme cluster. All animal and vegetal cells contain several genomes: their ADN, plus the ARN of their ribosomes, plus some other possible genome-like structures of other granulocytes contained in the cell and which may be the result of an archaic protovirus, or left in the cell by actual virus, or by the degradation of former cells (in fact the ADN only summarizes a part of the properties of the full genome of such cells, before their specialization in a full body for multicellular species). Chromosomes, that are part of this conventional genome, are much like words in the world of characters. Living cells are much like sentences (including their punctuation, to which I would compare the ribosomes or other granulocites...). A "individual" full living body is then much like a complete text, i.e. a book or an issue of a journal. If you identify this individual only to its ADN, it's just like if you just described the text only by its title, its author and year of publication. If you identify this text by an ISBN number, it's exactly like when you identify an individual with a social security number, or veterinary tracking number. If you identify the individual with its photo, it's exactly like when you identify a text by a scan of a printed book containing that text in its rendered state, as it was found a specific item in a library or book collection.
