• Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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    14 hours ago

    Also, they do respond to outside stimuli, otherwise they’d be completely inert.

    Do they actually respond? Or is it the external stimuli responding to them?

    • deranger@sh.itjust.works
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      13 hours ago

      They respond because they have to do things like inject the genetic material into the organism once it latches on to whatever on the cell surface. That doesn’t occur in the host, it occurs in the virus.

      It’s been a while since I took virology, but I feel pretty confident that something occurs in the virus due to an external stimulus.