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DEFINITION. "In 1987, Fred Cohen, the pioneer researcher in computer viruses, defined a computer virus to be: “A program that can infect other programs by modifying them to include a possibly evolved copy of itself”. https://lnkd.in/epaSkG4 View in LinkedIn

"TERRESTRIAL VIRUSES have shown remarkable resistance to environmental perturbation. Computer viruses in contrast are somewhat fragile, although examples can be cited of viral adaptation and more recently examples have been seen with error-correcting code." https://lnkd.in/g5hUBjg View in LinkedIn

VIRAL OVERLAPS. "Computer viruses metabolise memory and CPU time to produce changes in that memory space, whilst terrestrial viruses utilise energy and substrates from their host in synthetic activities. Both respond to changes in their environment. Both kinds display living characteristics as a property of a whole - segmentation almost always leads to total dysfunction." https://lnkd.in/g5hUBjg View in LinkedIn

TWO VIRAL WORLDS. "Computer code may be copied, shifted and deleted, not being tied to a specific location in memory. Terrestrial viruses direct the assembly of proteins and DNA into viral "patterns". Both types hijack the metabolism of their host and direct it towards the purpose of viral replication. Both have an internal self-representation, in an electronic binary pattern and DNA respectively." https://lnkd.in/g5hUBjg View in LinkedIn

CODE AS INFORMATION PATTERNS. "It is clear that computer and terrestrial viruses can be considered to exist as patterns in computer code and in molecules respectively." https://lnkd.in/g5hUBjg View in LinkedIn

THE MOLECULAR HEART. "We can now say that many—maybe all—nematodes are communicating by secreting small molecules to build chemical structures called ascarosides," says Sternberg, whose past research in C. elegans found that those worms secrete ascarosides both as a sexual attractant and as a way to control the social behavior of aggregation. "It's really exciting and a big breakthrough that tells us what to look for and how we, too, might be able to communicate with this entire phylum of animals." https://lnkd.in/d6Gc9fp View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE. We are far from cracking the language of birds, dolphins, whales and monkeys, despite their overt vocalizations. It turns out that we know more about ant, bacterial and worm communication than all those other big creatures put together. It is inherently true that any creature with a complex society must have an associated language. It turns out, surprising to some, that worm-speak has both syntax and modular structure. View in LinkedIn

ALPHABET SIZE UNKNOWN. “The researchers have only just begun to identify what these messages are. As you heard, adding one more chemical to the signal for “go away” changes the meaning to “come here.” It's still unknown how big the worms' “alphabet” of signaling chemicals is, or how many different chemicals may be used in a single message. It's clear, though, that worm language may be extremely different from ours, but it's built on one similar principle, which is that it's better to rearrange a smaller set of signals than to come up with a new signal for everything you want to say.” https://lnkd.in/eQAQ5eZ View in LinkedIn

WORM SYNTAX. “Scientists already knew that nematodes communicate with each other using chemical signals. This study, however, found that those chemicals have their own syntax, or rules for arranging elements into different meanings. In other words, the worms don't just use one chemical for each possible message. They combine two, three, or more chemicals at a time, and each combination has a different meaning, just like letters and words.” https://lnkd.in/eQAQ5eZ View in LinkedIn

DECODING MOLECULAR CHATTER. “As a next step, the researchers will explore how the worms' nervous system senses and deciphers the different chemical messages. "Understanding the worm's language is just a first step -- we now need to figure out how the worm decodes and makes these molecules.” https://lnkd.in/eaB_YWn View in LinkedIn