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.
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
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
mafiagovernment. 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 timeI'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?
“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
