Originally Posted by: Essan
Why would a virus want to kill it's host? What it wants (from an evolutionary perspective) is high virility and zero mortality. Then it can go on forever.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The purpose is to multiply and spread to ensure survival, but once its spread what happens to the host is irrelevant to the virus.
The mortality is to do with the hosts, and in most cases it's the weak that succumb.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yet, a virus is really just some very complex chemical substance, consisting of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat. Poliovirus has an empirical formula of C332652 H492388 N98245 O131196 P7501 S2340, compared to Polyethylene being (C2H4)n, Sucrose being C12 H22 O11, ethanol being C2 H6 O, and water H2 O.!
The virus action - to invade the cells of a host & make multiple copies of it's cells, causing illnesses or death, is really just a chemical reaction. A chemical reaction, of course, involves electron transfer - oxidation, reduction, electrophillic & nucleophillic addition & substitution, etc, etc. The various elements trying to attain the most stable oxidation states, e.g. Carbon being +4 state, Hydrogen +1, Phosphorus +5, Sulfur, +4 or +6, but Nitrogen 0, as it wants to be an element that has very strong triple bonds!
The nearest, much more basic chemical reaction, would be polymerisation, where monomers combine to form great chain or complex polymers, sometimes with elimination of simple molecules.
Maybe a an alternative way of fighting viruses is to introduce something in which a virus has a greater affinity for, something to donate/share electrons to much more readily than be just invading cells and to make copies itself.
Edited by user
31 January 2020 13:04:20
|
Reason: Not specified