God's Natures wonder: Cell conducts anti-viral warfare (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, November 05, 2016, 12:43 (2938 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A single celled animal self-sacrifices itself and releases viral making protein to kill attacking virus:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2110407-kamikaze-cells-wage-biowarfare-and-fight-v...

QUOTE: "The infected Cafeteria cell still dies – but when it breaks apart it releases maviruses rather than CroVs, preventing the spread of the infection. This, then, is altruistic behaviour, which turns out to be surprisingly common among microbes. For instance, some bacteria kill themselves as soon as they are infected by viruses to prevent the infection spreading."

David's comment: Another 'how did it develop' problem. Does the Cafeteria do this to protect others of its type? Or is it simply a byproduct of getting killed. And if that is true how did it develop and get passed on to subsequent generations. Death doesn't pass on bacterial inheritance, only cell splitting to daughter cells does that. God did it?
DAVID: No comment so far on this. It is a very precise problem. If you, a single-celled organism die in a defense mechanism, how is it fixed into evolution for daughter cells to carry if the only way to pass on inheritance is splitting onto two daughters? This has got to be God as the causative agent!

You will have to help me on this, because I may have misunderstood your comment. What is passed on? If it’s the defence mechanism – i.e. the altruistic self-sacrifice – it’s behavioural inheritance, and any form of behaviour that is advantageous could be passed on by cell memory (Sheldrake’s “morphic field” for the Cafeteria?). Where did cell memory come from? Maybe God.

What is of great interest to me is the altruism, which we also find very strikingly in other social organisms like ants. The fact that it is “surprisingly common among microbes” is perhaps not so surprising once we accept the possibility that microbes are intelligent beings. We humans pride ourselves on our altruism, as if somehow it is unique to our species, but once more it is a trait passed down to us from the very earliest of organisms – just like its counterpart of “me first”!