Bitch shape attack

Who's going to tell them about prions?

Fucking prions. When I first learned about them in high school they really made me freak out. They are like the new game+ final boss of things fucking with things. Like how can they even infect other things, fucking mangled and misfolded looking ass, fuck them!
- Definitely don’t think about the overpopulation of deer, the spread of CWD, the fact that deer are commonly found in corn fields, the US loves corn, and the plants can take up prions from the soil.
  That interspecies barrier seems like it’s the only thing between us and a huge disaster.
  https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/chronic-wasting-disease/plants-can-take-cwd-causing-prions-soil-lab-what-happens-if-they-are-eaten
They're like an origami figure folded wrongly that causes any properly folded origami figures to become misfolded when it comes in contact with them.

One of the theories how organisms switched from RNA to DNA is due to viruses. Viruses have a pretty wild range of their genetic diversity. Single strand DNA, double strand DNA, positive sense single strand RNA, negative sense single strand RNA, double strand RNA. We’ve also probably got viruses as a permanent part of our genome from some ancestor species.

I think they’re pretty cool. Also, they do respond to outside stimuli, otherwise they’d be completely inert.

We’ve also probably got viruses as a permanent part of our genome from some ancestor species.
We definitely have viruses as a permanent part of our genome. A type of herpes virus is present in the DNA of all living things descended from bony fishes
- Mammals wouldn't have a chorioallantoic placenta at all if not for a virus integrated into our genome. Mapping when in evolution the genes responsible for placental development first appeared was my first participation in scientific research, so I love this topic.
Also, they do respond to outside stimuli, otherwise they’d be completely inert.
Do they actually respond? Or is it the external stimuli responding to them?
- They respond because they have to do things like inject the genetic material into the organism once it latches on to whatever on the cell surface. That doesn’t occur in the host, it occurs in the virus.
  It’s been a while since I took virology, but I feel pretty confident that something occurs in the virus due to an external stimulus.

Viruses are nanomachines.

Change my mind.

Frankly, all life and life-adjacent things on this planet are either nanomachines or scalable nanomachines.
- One might call those scaled up nanomachines "machines".
they're not so much machines and more blueprints that makes the machine that's already there do different stuff.

Pretty sure those "horrible little scalawags" play some pretty crucial roles in the human microbiome...

In the same way that the mafia plays a crucial role in the Italian ~~mafia~~ government. They’re still a bunch of dicks, even if they’re working for us. Move ‘em 2 millimeters in the wrong direction and you’ll have a bad time
- I'm actually interested, is this true?
  When bacteria were first discovered, people found them in the gut and thought "oh, that's horrible. bacteria cause diseases, so we must get rid of them." it was only found out much later that bacteria in the gut can improve health on average.
  the same is true for many other categories of living beings, such as insects (worms), fungi; and now my question is whether it could be the same for viruses?
- Move ‘em 2 millimeters in the wrong direction and you’ll have a bad time
  Are you referring to getting, I dunno, yogurt in places outside the digestive tract?
  My understanding was that gut bacteria play a pretty crucial (beneficial) role in overall health, not to mention the whole gut-brain stuff.

“Go back to where you were born, go back to nothing, homunculus”

I will forever choose to die on the hill that tumblr humor is not funny

then die