• NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          What are you talking about? I’d like a citation for that.

          DNA in all eukaryotes is composed of adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. RNA in eukaryotes subs in uracil for thymine.

          There are things that make them substantially different from other branches of life, but not in that way.

      • sudo42@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Some have features of both plants and animals, so they’re kinda hard to fit into rigid categories.

        • pyre@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          they’re neither plants or animals, so… what does that have to do with being extra alive

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The image is in fact CGI, but yes there are several viruses known as bacteriophages that look like this.

      Trying to find this confirmed electromagnetic scan of this phage led me down a truly fascinating rabbit hole about antibacterial phage therapy, taxonomy, and more. Let your curiosity take the better of you on Wikipedia

    • Beryl@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Artist’s view of bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria and look like this. They attach to the bacterial wall with these fibers that look like spider legs, and then inject their DNA into the bacteria by contracting the sheath that attaches to the DNA-containing head. They kinda work like a syringe.

      • paddirn@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        They almost seem like just a “living” reproductive system, as if that’s the entirety of their existence. Like real-life Daleks going “IN-SEM-IN-ATE!”

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    I found this to be interesting. The word (and concept) of a virus predates its actual discovery by over 500 years.

    The English word “virus” comes from the Latin vīrus, which refers to poison and other noxious liquids. Vīrus comes from the same Indo-European root as Sanskrit viṣa, Avestan vīša, and Ancient Greek ἰός (iós), which all mean “poison”. The first attested use of “virus” in English appeared in 1398 in John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomeus Anglicus’s De Proprietatibus Rerum. Virulent, from Latin virulentus (‘poisonous’), dates to c. 1400. A meaning of ‘agent that causes infectious disease’ is first recorded in 1728, long before the discovery of viruses by Dmitri Ivanovsky in 1892.

  • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    This little doodad reminds me of Jenova Chen’s old freeware game flOw. Fun little game, but iirc it isn’t free anymore.

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 months ago

        I loved flOw and Flower, but I still haven’t played Journey, I need to get a good ps3 emulator just for that. Also I just checked and the 2006 “student” version of flOw is still free, the 2007 ps3 version is paid.

        • Daxtron2@startrek.website
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          6 months ago

          Its in steam now and works even better than the original ps3 version! Its also 70% off right now :0

          • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 months ago

            Ehhh I guess I need to figure out steam/proton then lol. I haven’t played games in years. Is Flower up there too?

            Edit: Thanks for all the advice on steam/proton everyone!

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              6 months ago

              Not much to figure out, just make sure to not get the flatpak/snap. Any non-arcane distro should have a working package, the trick to packing steam being not trying to be smart about things you basically have to give it a libc, gpu, and FHS (chroot or not), it takes care of everything else.

  • ToxicWaste@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    While technically phages are viruses, i think it is important to label them as phages.

    Typically a virus does not look like a robot. The by now rather well known SARS-CoV-2, with its spherical shape is a more common depiction of a virus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus

    Bacteriophage look like little robots and from the view of a bacterium - they probably are the equivalent of a terminator: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage

    • bruh@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      But phages are the most ubiquitous form overall. Maybe not as relevant if you mean viruses that infect humans.