Parent Virus
Strain 5 Parents:
These highly sophisticated strains are sometimes the offspring of Strain 4 viruses, but often are originally Strain 4s that deliberately modified themselves to this level. Strain 5 viruses exercise sexual reproduction, meaning that two Strain 5 viruses donate code of their own pure "genotype", which is recombined into a new "genotype" carried by the offspring. Unlike the asexual reproduction of other strains which merely replicate code possessed by the single parent, sexual reproduction create genetic diversity, as new features developed by one virus can be combined with features developed in another. Similarly, weaknesses in one virus' code can be masked by strength in the code donated by another, just as dominate genes prevent the expression of often harmful recessive genes in organic life forms. See also Virus/New Era.