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ADD-ON VIRUS. "Most viruses are add-on viruses. They function by appending their code to the host code, and/or by relocating the host code and inserting their own code to the beginning. The add-on virus then alters the startup information of the program, executing the viral code before the code for the main program." https://lnkd.in/eCG7b3z View in LinkedIn

COMPUTING MOLECULES. "Paul Rothemund showed chemical processes could perform not just complex, but universal computation: a combination of DNA strands and restriction enzymes could, in principle, simulate a Turing machine. Thus, the simplest kinds of chemistry can, in theory, perform any computation.” https://lnkd.in/dhc7k7H View in LinkedIn

"A SHELL VIRUS is one that forms a “shell” (as in “eggshell” rather than “Unix shell”) around the original code." https://lnkd.in/eCG7b3z View in LinkedIn

"COMPANION VIRUS, is not really a virus at all, but a form of trojan horse that uses the execution path mechanism to execute in place of a normal program. Unlike all other viral forms, it does not alter any existing code in any fashion: companion viruses create new executable files with a name similar to an existing program, and chosen so that they are normally executed prior to the “real” program." https://lnkd.in/eCG7b3z View in LinkedIn

VIROID. "True viruses have two major components: one that handles the spread of the virus, and a “payload” or “manipulation” task. The payload task may not be present (has null effect), or it may await a set of predetermined circumstances before triggering." https://lnkd.in/eCG7b3z View in LinkedIn

INFORMATION. "This work suggests that the concept of a self-replicating chemistry is closely related to the concept of a chemistry that can store information and compute." https://lnkd.in/dhc7k7H View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last week on this final piece about increasing genetic complexity, or not in nature. The innate world appears to be driven by entropy, the drive towards chaos, lowest energy, greatest stability. In contrast, living things build complexity, higher energy structures, and least stability. Whether there is a trend towards greater genetic complexity and information or not is an interesting question. View in LinkedIn

COULD A STRAND OF INFORMATION called code, a binary data set, ever achieve a critical mass, a higher complexity, or cooperative functionality? Even if it did, we may still not understand what occurred right before our very eyes. View in LinkedIn

UNEXPECTED COMBINATIONS. "A single-celled bacterium is alive, but if you separate the macromolecules that combined to create the bacterium, these units are not alive. Based on our knowledge of macromolecules, we would not have been able to predict that they could combine to form a living organism, nor could we have predicted all of the characteristics of the resulting bacterium." https://lnkd.in/epkJVpt View in LinkedIn

“INATE MOLECULES transitioned into life forms during evolution. Was it a critical mass of such entities? Was it a transformation related to complexity? Was it cooperative functionality? Whatever it was, we have zero understanding of this process despite all the tools at our disposal.” https://lnkd.in/epkJVpt View in LinkedIn