Many people think that flu virus is the most clever. But how can we measure intelligence of virus and bacteria? Is that pathogenesis, escaping from immune system or no vaccine?
Viruses should not be characterized as 'clever'. Viruses don't 'think' or plot or plan strategies to get us. Viruses adapt to a particular host, at a particular time, in a particular environment. As these things change, the virus will adapt or be lost. I can't improve on Dr. Janaka's answer. I only answer because it is distressing when viruses are described by adjectives that imply that virus have a conscience.
I dont think it is an issue of judging its cleverness. Pathogens which can stay in the host for a long time without killing the host and also working out an efficient transmission strategy will be the fittest pathogen. On the other hand, pathogens which cause an extreme rapid rate of disease progression stand a lower chance of efficient transmission, due to immune modulation and other curative measures the host may take.
Cleverness may really just be a measure of how long the pathogen has co-existed with the host or the host's ancestors.
Viruses should not be characterized as 'clever'. Viruses don't 'think' or plot or plan strategies to get us. Viruses adapt to a particular host, at a particular time, in a particular environment. As these things change, the virus will adapt or be lost. I can't improve on Dr. Janaka's answer. I only answer because it is distressing when viruses are described by adjectives that imply that virus have a conscience.
I;m agree with Susan and Sanath. viruses according to their genetic structure, tissue tropism and host genetic adapt with their host immune system so that survive. so each replication strategies represent a differnt genetic structure(as segmented for flu or DNA intermediat for HIV and etc) and different tissue tropism such immune cells for HIV, and these needs an adaption between virus and host.
I agree with all the previous responses but I'd like to add that the more we know from viruses, the more complex they are found. For instance, my lab mates have recently identified in norovirus a virulence factor targeting the mitochondria which overlaps with the capsid protein gene in a different frame. This gives us an idea of the complexity of different viruses genome organisation and the multiple pathways to interact and modify the host responses to their own benefit. From my point of view, the most successful viruses are those that are persisting in our organism without causing disease (i.e latent herpes virus, asymptomatic papillomavirus strains in our skin, retroviruses and other RNA viruses integrated in our genome). Imagine now, that apart from humans, there are million of different species who are infected by billions of different viruses and in every case there might be different fascinating solutions to successfully hijack the infected organism. From my point of view every virus is 'clever' or more exactly highly specialised in infecting and propagating in their respective hosts.
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