**Author details**

548 The Complex World of Polysaccharides

**8. Conclusion** 

real-life languages by living beings. These sign-generating and sign-using agents live *in vivo* in continued changing interactions and environmental circumstances (interaction HSV-cellscarrageenans). This is the context (pragmatics) in which a living being is interwoven. This context determines the meaning (semantics) of the signs in messages that are used to communicate and to coordinate single as well as group behavior (changes in HSVglycoproteins in contact with cell surface modificate innate response). Therefore, we may understand that the same sentence, or the same syntactic sequence order, of any language or code can have different, and in extreme cases, opposite meanings and therefore transport different messages. The important consequence of this fact is that it is not possible to extract the meaning of an information content solely out of the syntactic structure, but someone has to identify the context within which the living being uses this syntactic structure. The primary agents are not the sequences of signs, nor the rules which determine sequences, but the living agents. Without living agents there are no signs, no semiotic rules, no signalling, and no communication, no living agents could coordinate growth and development. If we assume the genetic code to function language-like, knowing that no language which has been observed functions by itself, then we have to postulate living agents that are competent to use signs coherent with syntactic, pragmatic, and semantic rules. Adapted to the genetic code, this means that there must be living agents competent in generation and integration of meaningful nucleotide sequences, and meaningful nucleotide sequences are not a randomly derived mixture of nucleotides. In accord with Dr. Witzany, this view could change the construction of research projects, that is, shifting the focus from mutational (random) changes of nucleotide sequences to investigating nucleotide sequences from the perspective of viral-derived sequences that now play important roles in the regulation of cellular functions, for example, HSV asymptomatic infection where the virus have reached an equilibrium status balance by the immune response of the infected host to achieve a latent lifestyle. Their status within one of many addiction modules (genetic and genomic innovations) together with the host immune system, each of them a unique culturedependent habitat can be changed by nonbeneficial circumstance for the cell (e.g., stress)

and they may become lytic again, resulting in a variety of diseases [59].

This work invites us to think about a possible alternative to attenuate virus for basic science study, therapeutical or prophylatic applications, employing natural compounds with chemical structures already "seen" by the pathogen and present in the host as essential cellular components widely distributed in nature. Besides, selective reexpression of viral ligands (using different type of polysaccharides) in conjunction with pathogenesis experiments will allow the testing of predictions about putative protective roles played by some glycans in certain tissues. Studying the comparative glycobiology of closely and distantly related species should also help, by ascertaining the rates of glycan diversification during evolution.This strategy could be considered as a natural evolutionary process where the virus contributes with valuable "updated" information gathered from previous ancestral infections and making it available for "new" actual hosts, generating a reciprocal benefit between host and virus.

Carlucci María Josefina\* , Mateu Cecilia Gabriela, Artuso María Carolina and Scolaro Luis Alberto *Departamento de Química Biológica- IQUIBYCEN (CONICET-UBA), Laboratorio de Virología, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Ciudad Universitaria, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina* 
