Did viruses precede other life?

[ElectricFetus]

Many proteins have similar sequences and domains like beta-alpha-beta motifs. We would say they have homologies domains, but that does not mean they all have this motif because they share it from common ancestry, that motif is very useful and common and most likely evolved in parallel in many proteins.

 

[Buckaroo Banzai]

personally, i think that the invalid iconography of the perception of evolution, from simple to more complex, is biasing the estimation of the origin of viruses. I would not be surprised if one day we find that viruses evolved from a more complex life form, like a bacteria to its more simple form. there are many examples of this type of evolution, from complex to more simple, for example the pre-cursors to chloroplasts and mitochondria were more complex, and the precursers to some mammalian gut parasites. probably many others.

I've read a interview with Joël de Rosnay, tabout origin of life as a logic consequence of the formation of planets with the certain characteristics. He also said something in the sense that may viruses had been something else before and then they've found a way to don't need to do the hard work of reproducing themselves. I guess that was there also where I first saw this thing about the possibility of the common chemical ancestry of chlorophyl and hemoglobin.

Anyway, I've downloaded the article on PNAS, and searched for "preced*", and "cellular", and I found nothing about viruses preceding cellular life. The only related thing I found was:

By comparing the tertiary and quaternary structures of the coat
protein of this virus with those of a bacterial and an animal virus,
we find conformational relationships among all three, suggesting
that some viruses may have a common ancestor that precedes the
division into three domains of life >3 billion years ago.

Found already in the abstract, although I've searched in the entire PDF for these terms. Maybe this thing of preceding cellular life is expressed in a more indirect way, making impossible to find by these terms, or maybe was simply an error of "The Scientist"....

Before this search I thought that the explanation of viruses preceding cellular life has something to do with alternative theories of origins of life, those that don't need replicators, some with metabolism preceding reproduction or something, and this kind of stuff. But that didn't help anyway because I don't know them more deeply than this short description.

 

[paulsamuel]

I've read a interview with Joël de Rosnay, tabout origin of life as a logic consequence of the formation of planets with the certain characteristics. He also said something in the sense that may viruses had been something else before and then they've found a way to don't need to do the hard work of reproducing themselves. I guess that was there also where I first saw this thing about the possibility of the common chemical ancestry of chlorophyl and hemoglobin.

Anyway, I've downloaded the article on PNAS, and searched for "preced*", and "cellular", and I found nothing about viruses preceding cellular life. The only related thing I found was:

Found already in the abstract, although I've searched in the entire PDF for these terms. Maybe this thing of preceding cellular life is expressed in a more indirect way, making impossible to find by these terms, or maybe was simply an error of "The Scientist"....

Before this search I thought that the explanation of viruses preceding cellular life has something to do with alternative theories of origins of life, those that don't need replicators, some with metabolism preceding reproduction or something, and this kind of stuff. But that didn't help anyway because I don't know them more deeply than this short description.

I haven't read the original PNAS paper, but it's not unlikely that The Scientist erred in its description.

This origin of life stuff is pretty interesting, but I admit, I know little of it. Apparently there's a theory of RNA world, and this was how replication and metabolism occured prior to enzymatic reactions and DNA replication.

NASA has a whole Astrobiology lab that is studying origin of life questions. I'd love to work on something like that.