Why can't virus kill another virus?

if you can find one virus to kill another virus they usually cancel each other out.
Lukeimia could be used to kill the aids virus. or Lupis could used for that too. Maybe. They would cancel each other out maybe.

You could use a virus to kill another virus, however the problem is the DNA programming. Viruses are programmed to survive. Therefore they must replicate themselves.

They rewrite the DNA data in human cells to make more viruses. In this fashion they "hijack" the cells to be factories to propagate themselves.

It would be possible to make a virus attack another. The first thing would be to make the virus "seek" the type of thing it would need to "attack". This is assuming we develop the tech to engineer viruses(Scary thought). Once something like that was created, it wouldn't be far off to start engineering human DNA, but that's a different question. :)

Probably the best way to have virus "hunter" would be to have the virus rewrite the DNA of it's prey into something harmless. The virus would also need a way to replicate itself without hurting the host. So most probably that would involve a type of artifical replication outside the host.

Before all of this is "invented" I believe nanotechnology will be prefected. Why engineer viruses when you can build small machines the same size to do your bidding? They could kill viruses and rebuild damaged tissue at the same time! Technology like this really isn't too far off. In the next 50 to 100years from what I understand, it would be commonplace, or even sooner.

Cause viruses only go after living cells

gtt

It wouldn't be effective. The best way to stop viruses is to prevent them from reproducing. In order to understand why you really have to get into virus theory and how they spread and why they infect humans in the first place. Basically viruses invade humans so they can reproduce. To send viruses in to the human body to "kill" other viruses would be ineffective really. Also leukemia and lupus are not viruses.

It's hard to kill something that's not actually alive.

What is a virus? it is a piece of DNA coated in protein.
What does a virus do? it plants itself in a cell, inserts its DNA into the cell, and copies itself by cranking out its own pirate DNA and proteins.
How do you stop a virus? Stop it from getting into a cell, stop it from copying its DNA, stop it from making protein

Sorry, but viruses aren't exactly the best way to stop viruses because you can't be selective about stopping the virus' necessary processes. The viruses you want to use might also have effects of their own, too.

Lupus is NOT a virus. Leukemia is NOT a virus. Both of these are idseases that affect the immune system (in their own special way)

Leukemia is a blood cancer. Lupis is an autoimmune disease. These are not caused by viruses.

The reason one virus does not kill another is that viruses have no interest in each other. The only interest a virus has is to reproduce, make more of itself. To do this, it needs to enter a cell that has the genetic machinery to reproduce, because a virus does not have the genes needed to initiate the preproduction of its genes. Once in the cell, it hijacks the cell's machinery and turns it into a device to reproduce only copies of the virus. It "disappears" into the cell's genes and instructs them to make copies of the virus, "reappearing" copied many times over.

But your idea is intriguing to some researchers. I remember that there was at the start of the AIDS thing some speculation that a bacteria found in cows that ate viruses could be used to infect humans such that it would not harm them and would eat the HIV virus. It was either not pursued or it was found wanting.


It would be very interesting to have a bacteria like that, but I can see at least one way that it would not work: viruses could evolve to use the bacteria that ate them as reproductive sources like they do other cells. That is essentially what the HIV virus does - the cells that are supposed to eat them to death end up the target.

There is no need for viruses to hunt one and other.
What they are looking for when they invade a macro system is the means to replicate, as viruses have no inherent means of replication why would they attack each other

I am sure glad you asked this question, it intrigued me and provoked me to do some reading. What previous answers to your question have said is true: viruses are not living, they have either some DNA, or RNA but not both, and they only reproduce inside of a host cell. This following interesting bit came from Wikopedia: "...viruses do not move, metabolize, or decay on their own." Thus a virus could not break down another virus. An immune system must destroy the virus for it to be rid of it. Great question!

You're making the assumption that biological systems are well-ordered: that every cell infected by virus A will always become infected by virus B. This isn't always the case.

Also, unintended side-effects are also possible (even likely). You can look at computers for many examples of this: computer virus A is released. Virus B is released and is supposed to clean up after A, except the fact that it's present at all causes uninfected computers to have problems; in addition, virus B doesn't always clean up virus A properly, causing even worse problems.

That said, there is certainly work going on with "gene therapy". in which a common virus is used to carry a tailored gene into cells. It's worked in experiments, but several human test cases have died. It's currently considered too risky to try.

I've browsed through a few replied looks like we're all on right track. Virus has to infect a living cell for it to reproduce, and this could even be bacteria! Bacteriophage is a virus that attacks bacteria. However virus cannont attack another virus because virus itself is not a cell nor it is "living".

To Sonyack: There is a virus that can cause leukemia - HTLV. Although lupus is an autoimmune disease, it needs a viral trigger to set it off. So yeah if there is a way to get prevent infection of viruses in the first place these two disease might not occur