There is a critical point here that is being missed. Virii are not living and are outside the realm of evolution in the sense evolutionists talk about. No where on the "tree of life" showing ancestral relations will you find a virus. Although a virus can mutate and adapt to become virulent where it was not previously, it can't "evolve" into a living organism - even a single celled bacteria. Just as PurestAmbrosia said, it may be possible to generate a new virus in the lab, but it is impossible to generate even a single living bacteria from the basic elements.
Great post akhi:
I am going to try to explain this in very easy terms.. How viruses work--I wish someone had done this for me back in the day-- but anyhow for those interested, and I am almost certain for the most part no one will be interested in reading this save a handful. As I notice people enjoy throwing terms and using articles but not really understanding the mechanism behind them, which is a shame since it can mislead many people...
The best example of a virus in lay man's term is a polymer, but out of nucleic acid so obviously they change all the time from things they pick up or exchange along the way through many mechanisms.. the mechanisms can only be attained from living things and that is how they become infective or lethal. let's say your cell has a key that is triangular shaped.. and I make this polymer that will be a perfect fit for that triangular shaped lock of yours.. obviously this can be understood as Glycoprotein- GP 120 or CCR5.. I am just using normal terms so when you read about CCR5 or Gp-120 or any other that might pass your way-- on your own time you can assimilate it to something that makes sense on an every day level!
then any number of things can happen--we can have recombination via the exchange of genes between two sets of chromosomes by crossing over within regions of significant base sequence homology in other words two nucleic acids can be exchanged but they are still somehow alike. that is one way so you don't end up with many different serotypes.
Also we can have reassortment which is when viruses with segmented regions (that is pretty much self explanatory) but an ex of that would be the flu exchanges these segments, and I believe that is very much where the term "evolution" can fit, every time you have a new segmentation, it causes a very high frequency of new recombination, and that is why it causes world wide pandemics.. if scientists aren't on top of it trying to figure out what new recombination might arise yearly. What they don't tell you though, is that sometimes it can be a miss... I mean some segments can be assimilated in the vaccine and some can be completely missed.
We can also have complementation it pretty much like a marriage I don't want to use rogue terms but neither a man nor a woman can have a baby on their own.. they are missing something that the other partner can give and that is what complementation does for a virus -- one complements the other and they exchange parts that make both of them functional.
and last but not least we can have phenotypic mixing again in lay man terms is like we are exchanging coats or cloaks. I give you my coat which can cause harm in its own (surface protein) way plus your own nucleic acid sequence which causes harm in another way.. so you have my type A coat with your own Type B genetic material however there is many different combination that can exist.
I can go into more details in this, if anyone has specific questions. If not.. I hope we can all see the difference between a cell and all its functions and a purely acellular organism.
thanks for reading
