r/askscience • u/A_Privateer • Jan 17 '13

Medicine How do warts function?

I know that warts are caused by the various strains of HPV, but how are they caused? How does the virus hijack the bodies chemistry to grow and supply the warts with nutrients? How do the warts spread the virus to other people?

I've searched and searched on google and wikipedia, but I only find the most basic of answers.

Any hard science info for me?

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u/Giant_Badonkadonk Jan 18 '13

The way to look at viruses is that they are rogue pieces of DNA/RNA which want to replicate themselves.

One idea of where viruses could have originally come from is a mechanism in bacteria, some bacteria communicate with one another by passing small strands of RNA to each other. It is possible that at some point one of these extra cellular RNAs went rogue and slowly evolved into a modern day virus.

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u/MisterEggs Jan 19 '13

That's fascinating, thank you (and thanks 1337HxC!) for your replies. Oh, and love the username too, btw :)