It is extremely difficult to speak with certainty about what happened on Earth billions of years ago. There can be no proofs, only hypotheses concerning Creation. And, naturally, the question that must first be answered is: “What is Life?” — this seemingly simple question whose answers lie hidden on many levels... Scientists attempt, within a few words, to provide a definition of life, yet the matter becomes somewhat more complicated when it comes to viruses. Viruses, as obligate intracellular parasites, seem to fall outside the “classical” definition of Life, according to which living beings are those that move, breathe and reproduce independently. And yet these organisms, conventionally regarded as living, are found everywhere and have existed since the beginning of the world. Today there are 10³¹ types of viruses, most of them found in the sea, while they “attack” every form of life, every type of cell, from the cells of primordial organisms such as bacteria to human cells. This “evil” that attacks us from time to time has contributed enormously to Creation and continues to possess a mysterious mode of operation. How contradictory might it sound to someone that the first cell arose from a virus? Could that which kills Life have preceded Life itself?
The nature of viruses is not clear, and their role in the ongoing Creation remains Dark. When a virus comes into contact with a cell and succeeds in penetrating it, it then, in a particular way, installs its genetic material within the genetic material of the host, in order to “exploit” the reproductive machinery of the cell so as to multiply. Over the course of time, viruses that passed through the human species, after inserting their genetic material, became inactive, leaving behind their imprint: DNA bases within the DNA of the host itself. In this way they caused mutation; they introduced information that had not previously existed there, and this is the beginning of evolution: diversity, or in other words multiplicity of forms. At this moment, 100,000 fragments of viral genetic material are found within human DNA, amounting to 8% of the whole. The transition from prokaryotic cells — cells without an organised nucleus — to eukaryotic cells — cells with a defined nucleus — was, according to recent research, triggered by the infection of an amoeba by a type of giant virus: the amoeba “stole” the way in which the virus organised its genetic material within the capsid. The transition to placental mammals also occurred because of infection by an ancient virus. Ancient viruses used syncytin in order to fuse with the outer membrane of the target cell. And, as it appears, syncytin in mammals performs approximately the same function: the outer layer of the placenta consists of many cells that have fused into one.
If we look at the matter more broadly, we see that a passive, closed system such as a cell could not, on its own, mutate beyond a narrow range. Yet when it receives an external “invasion”, it is pushed in a new direction, whatever form that direction may take. The coexistence of the two is so important that without the cell the virus could not exist, while without the virus the cell could neither have existed nor evolved. It is so important that there can be no study of Life unless it includes the perspective of viruses. Otherwise, it remains incomplete.
All this may seem extreme to one person and merely another piece of information to someone else. The question is whether, from everything that takes place around them, a human being can actually experience something of it and discover its correspondences within. How, within the blackness of destruction, there also exists the whiteness of Creation. And also how an Idea may function as a Virus... One that, if it slips inside the Human Being, pushes them into another position. Perhaps EROS too is another kind of Virus, leaving its imprint within the cells so that they are no longer the same. Here Science takes a step back... The Human Being, however, carries within the Possibility of “seeing” with other Eyes... And thus, perhaps, may answer the question in another way: “What is Life?”