Re: GAS-L: A plague of viruses..

[Joacim Persson <joacim@ymex.net>]

Completely off-topic:

I'm far more worried of the coming of the day when bioinformatics and 
micro biology has advanced to a point where it will be possible for the 
people who today spend time designing computer viruses, with their 
specific psychological profile, to produce synthetic /biological/ viruses,
bacteria etc; organisms which evolution, i.e. the immune system of living
creatures, never has encountered before... Life on Earth has only seen a
tiny fraction of all proteins DNA is capable of coding for. Suppose the HIV
virus could be modified to be stable enough to spread via air as a normal
cold, and still have a long incubation time and high mortality.

Any strand of DNA can be produced at will today already: you enter the code
"ctaggtactaatgctag..." press the button and yield a tube with it. The
equipment exist already.

But so far, the understanding of what effect a certain protein does exactly,
and the epistasis, coupling, between various genes is not deep enough, but
it /will/ be. The lid of Pandora's box is only standing ajar.

Eliminating computer viruses is simple. You can change OS or applications.
But you cannot (safely) change your own DNA each and every day, whenever a
new lethal virus shows up.

Sorry if I frightened you. ;)

Joacim


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