Thomas is probably right in thinking that some viruses can sometimes distribute a capacity to do certain things among organ isms. Mourant suggested that is how calcium phosphate came to be widely exploited as structural material It is a logical extension of Altmann's old suggestion that organ isms acquire various microscopically visible structures by absorbing other organisms, or bits of them. But these are mere accidents that rarely benefit the donor except when an infected host becomes a focus for further spread. Then it is the ability to "hijack" the host's synthetic machinery, not the ability to modify it that is important.
Survival of the Fittedest
An unacceptable level of teleology crept into Lewis Thomas' article on viruses (The Scientist, April 6, 1987, p. 13). They do not have functions, they just have properties. The small and simpler viruses are just chemical structures, perpetuated because they delude pre-existing synthetic mechanisms into copying them. They can do that effectively only if they survive in the hostile environment of a host cell. It is hostile more because of scavenging enzymes than because of directed host activities
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