Frank Ryan > Quotes

“What do scientists mean when they talk of a virus? This is not quite so elementary as some people might believe. In The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, a virus is defined as "a morbid principle, or a poisonous venom, especially one capable of being introduced into another person or animal." The dictionary takes its cue from the Latin virus, which denotes a slimy liquid, a poison, an offensive odor or taste. It is a colorful definition, redolent of medieval notions of disease origins in evil emanations, but it offers little by way of scientific understanding.”
― Frank Ryan, Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues

“With direct transmission, the genes of the symbiont will leave descendants only to the extent that the host survives and reproduces. In general, therefore, mutations in the genes of the symbiont will be established by selection only if they increase the fitness of the host.9”
― Frank Ryan, Virolution: The Most Important Evolutionary Book Since Dawkins' Selfish Gene

“Plague culling of the host population will result in a new partnership, in which the rudiment of host will re-expand its population, but this new population, now actively co-evolving with the virus, will inevitably give rise to reproductive separation. If exogenous infection is lethal to the host, mating will kill those naïve to the persisting virus, which will remain infectious for a very long time. Meanwhile, the viral elements within the genome will multiply and insert themselves throughout the chromosomes, offering pre-evolved genes, and powerful bureaucratic manipulative sequences capable of radically changing the future evolution of what now amounts to a new holobiontic organism.”
― Frank Ryan, Virolution: The Most Important Evolutionary Book Since Dawkins' Selfish Gene