Unintelligent Design

After Dr. Wasser's comments on Intelligent Design the other day and the latest trend of posting news stories to this blog, I thought I might add my two cents to the penny tray.

http://www.discover.com/issues/mar-06/cover/?page=1

The cover story on this month's Discover magazine is about a virus that's large enough to be seen with a light microscope and with more genes than some species of bacteria. Known as a mimivirus, this virus has genes for DNA repair enzymes and protein translation, behaviors that were considered unique amongst cellular organisms. Now theories are being presented in which stabalized viruses within prokaryotic bacteria were the precursors to eukaryotic cells.

Some interesting points from the article:

• People actually have more retroviral DNA in their cells than "human" DNA.
• There exist "satellites" which are viruses that replicate inside other viruses that are replicating within cells.
• Or viroids which are viruses without a protein coat. These are free-floating strands of RNA that don't code for anything, yet somehow cause disease.