Introduction to one of the most fascinating "entities"

VIRUSES are fascinating. Did you know they are actually called "particles"!? It is because of their special characteristic of being a living thing inside a host organism but are non-living outside those hosts. You heard right, they are NON-LIVING outside the host as in they don't reproduce nor perform any kind of living organism activity.

This past year and a half we have seen one of these viruses creating a havoc all around the world. But are viruses really all bad? I mean you would definitely think "off course what are you talking about! Viruses are the worst". But the matter of fact is that viruses have played a very crucial role in our evolution throughout the ages. The most important placenta, present in the womb of a pregnant mother which supplies nutrients and exchanges gases for the fetus to survive and thrive and develop, is in fact encoded by modified env genes of endogenous retroviruses (ERV) 1 which fuses cells. About 8 genes encode the syncytin family which are expressed in the human trophoblasts. Now just think for a minute about this, "Had there been no viruses, we probably would have taken many more billions of years to become what we are today or may not even have evolved into this Homo sapiens as we know today!", give this statement a thought.

The famous American children's rights activist, Marian Wright Edelman once said, "In every seed of good there is always a piece of bad".

Yes, viruses have caused the loss of a large number of lives. Viruses like HIV and Influenza have been dreaded for a long time now. You might have heard about how HIV suppresses the immune system and later leads to secondary infection which can at times be fatal or you might have heard about the several influenza outbreaks like the H1N1 (1919; also called the Spanish flu) or the H7N1 (1999). On top of these there have been more lethal outbreaks like the ones due to Ebola (1976, 2014), Nipah (1999), SARS-CoV (2003), MERS-CoV (2012), Zika (2015), SARS-CoV-2 (2019).

Now I am an aspiring scientist and scientists have a tendency to be extremely passionate and enthusiastic about their work. So the aspiring scientist in me believes that from a scientific point of view, viruses are actually very fascinating. You see, they don't have much of their own:- a couple of proteins, some genetic material, and at times a little bit of a lipid membrane. That's it!! Actually, even those few things are made by the host FOR the viruses (yes!! No kidding!). Just think about how great a parasite it is. And for them to become such successful parasites with so less is what makes them so fascinating. The viruses have taken “Less is more” to another level! No wonder that according to a theory called the "Virus-first hypothesis"- viruses are the link between the formation of organic molecules and the emergence of cells in the evolution of life on earth, although this hypothesis has been disproved due to it ignoring the fact that viruses are obligate parasites and need a host to replicate.

But one thing is for sure, the very high rate of mutation present in the virus gives it an advantage over every other organism when it comes to natural selection. Viruses have also shown great ability to jump across species and then adapt to the new species very well, SARS-CoV-2 being a great example which is believed to have zoonotic origins as well.

But let us not dive into conspiracy theories (not for now at least) and let me just conclude this first blog post here by saying that whether you like viruses or not, I hope this post was able to nudge the curiosity inside you to know more about viruses, and if that is the case then please don't forget to subscribe to us for latest updates about new posts and to also join our newsletter which shall be starting anytime soon.

So with that I take your leave for now, hope you liked the post, if you have any suggestions for the posts then please don't hesitate to contact us.

In the hope of being able to spread a little awareness about virology and science in general.

Chalo Bye...