Alien Knights

(This chapter involves theoretical and experimental plots. Although the author has simplified it, there may still be some brain-burning. If you are not used to it, you can jump directly to the conclusion at the end of this chapter)

In Todd's view, there is no other microorganism in the world that has such a weird form as a "tyrant".

After magnifying the sample tens of thousands of times, from the outside, "Tyrant" looks a bit like a primitive phage virus. Its head is a huge cyst, which is used to hold DNA fragments, its body is a thick straight virus stem, and its tail is hundreds of super-long hoses similar to octopus tentacles.

In order to test the physiological characteristics of the "tyrant" virus, Todd specially designed a set of in vivo experiments.

Divide twelve mice into four groups, three in each group, respectively:

The first group of experimental subjects did nothing, just very ordinary white mice.

The second group was injected with supernatural bacteria.

The third group was injected with Sutherland archaea and heterobacteria at the same time, but the ratio of the two was controlled within a certain range to ensure that there would be no mutation.

The fourth group was injected with Sutherland archaebacteria and supernatural bacteria, but the number of supernatural bacteria exceeded the carrying capacity of archaebacteria, which deliberately caused the experimental body to mutate.

These four groups of experimental subjects correspond to four types of people: ordinary people, ordinary heterogeneous people, normal successors, and mutated successors.

The "tyrant" virus was injected into the bodies of four groups of mice, and after a period of time, all the experimental subjects changed.

The first group of experimental subjects representing ordinary people experienced high fever, vomiting, convulsions, and fainting within 30 minutes after being injected with the virus, and all of them died in the end.

The second group of experimental subjects representing common alien species suffered the same fate as the first group, and all died.

The third group represented the normal successors. After struggling for ten hours, they still couldn't get rid of the fate of death.

As for the last group of experimental subjects representing mutant successors, after being injected with the tyrant, the body mutation gradually stopped, the body surface and organs returned to normal state, and the basic external stress ability was retained.

How is this going?

Todd picked out a mouse from each of the four groups of experimental products and began to conduct dissection tests.

Opening the skull of the first white mouse, Todd was taken aback by the situation inside. Although the brain had stopped functioning, the cortical cells in the brain were all covered by a shrinking black mesh membrane.

It looked as if someone had tightly covered the entire nervous system of the experimental subject with a layer of black plastic wrap.

Todd put the mouse's brain slice under the microscope, and after some observations, he finally obtained the physiological data of "Tyrant".

The working principle of "Tyrant" is somewhat similar to that of bacteriophages. They use tentacles made of proteins to "land" on the cell surface, and then insert the tentacles into the nucleus to extract high-quality DNA fragments in the cells (the preferred strategy is not yet clear), and then inhale these DNA into the virus capsule for storage.

When it has finished engulfing a group of cells, it selects the next group of targets to continue the process.

When the number of DNA fragments in the capsule reaches a certain amount, the "tyrant" virus will stop engulfing it, and instead, like a larva making a cocoon, it will use surrounding free protein and other nutritional tissues to form a large spherical "Virus Nest".

The process of the birth of this sphere is the most incredible link in Todd's opinion.

Tens of thousands of "tyrant" viruses gathered together, stretched their protein tentacles to the limit, and used the ends of the tentacles to overlap each other between two viruses, forming a hollow tubular channel as a "bridge". So many viruses have jointly built a three-dimensional grid-like spherical "virus nest" through the tentacle channels connected to each other.

What happened next was the most exciting scene.

The "Tyrant" virus transmits the DNA fragments from the head to the tentacles on the tail through the stem of the virus, and then transmits them to the heads of other viruses through the pipeline built by the tentacles. It is like a three-dimensional pipe network running at high speed, and the viruses are constantly exchanging and screening DNA.

During this process, "Tyrant" activates all the genes in the sleeping non-coding region of the DNA and replicates them in large quantities. Then these "Tyrant" viruses are like pickers on the workshop assembly line, comparing and checking the fully activated DNA fragments, throwing away those inferior and useless fragments, and leaving those high-quality parts. Finally, these fragments are reassembled in the "Virus Nest" to form a new, evolved biological gene.

But for some unknown reason, most of the genes in the existing organisms were all classified as inferior and useless genes by the "tyrant" virus, which also caused the death of all the first three groups of experimental subjects.

Now that the working principle of the "tyrant" virus is clarified, the next step is to talk about its relationship with the Sutherland archaea "love and kill each other".

Sutherland archaea is a very special kind of bacterium. When it is in a normal state, it is not much different from other bacteria. In terms of defense function, it cannot resist the invasion of the "tyrant" virus.

However, when it mutates, drastic physiological changes will occur in the bacteria, and a very special catalytic enzyme (Enzyme) will be produced on the surface. The main function of this catalytic enzyme, which is mainly composed of proteins, is to greatly increase cell activity, promote the process of archaeal mutation, and provide energy for the entire mutation. But this enzyme also has an interesting "side effect" at the same time - when the "tyrant" virus invades, they use their own enzyme protein to temporarily protect the main tissues in the organism from damage.

The fourth group of experimental subjects, those mutated successors, did not die because of the catalytic enzyme secreted by the Sutherland archaea mutated.

Moreover, when the confrontation between the virus and the archaea reached the final stage, the "tyrant" virus would stop phagocytosis and instead connect to each other to form a virus nest to assemble and release those evolutionary genes, and the Sutherland archaea also consumed a large amount of catalytic enzymes, so the mutation process was terminated, and the archaea returned to a normal state and began to accumulate new enzyme proteins.

Does the process sound complicated?

If the Sutherland archaea and the tyrant virus are likened to a couple, it will be much easier to understand.

"Tyrant" virus is a grumpy wife who usually turns the house upside down (attacks all cells) because of trivial matters. As a husband, "Sutherland Archaea" is usually a strict wife and dares not to resist, but as long as he drinks a few sips of wine (the archaea mutates) and has courage in his body (the archaea produces catalytic enzymes), he dares to confront his wife. But after a fight, the couple always reconciled in the end. (Tyrant virus stops phagocytosis and starts gene assembly; Sutherland archaea runs out of catalytic enzymes, causing mutation to stop.)

After figuring out the working principle of the "tyrant" virus and its relationship with the Sutherland archaea, Todd finally understood a series of visions caused by this strange virus.

In the laboratory log, Todd wrote the preliminary research results of the "tyrant" virus:

1. The definition of "tyrant": This is a virus similar to a phage, which can be assembled into a new evolutionary gene by extracting DNA fragments from other microorganisms.

2. "Tyrant" swallows normal cells, plunders the DNA fragments in the cells, and stores them in the body.

3. The "tyrant" viruses can connect with each other, combine and build a "virus nest", and activate, screen, recombine and assemble DNA fragments in the nest, and finally generate a new and evolved biological gene.

4. Ordinary people, ordinary heterogeneous and unmutated successors, after contact with the "tyrant", will be swallowed by the cells in the body tissues and eventually die.

5. The mutated successor, the mutated Sutherland archaea in the body, can produce a catalytic enzyme that maintains the mutation process, and this enzyme can resist the engulfment of the "tyrant". When the tyrant reaches a certain upper limit in phagocytes, the virus will stop attacking and form a "viral nest" to begin genetic recombination and evolution. During this period of time, the catalytic enzymes of the mutated archaea were also consumed to a certain extent due to the resistance to viruses, and the entire mutation process would also be terminated at the same time. The archaea reverted to a normal form and began to re-accumulate enzyme proteins, preparing to resist the next virus attack.

6. Strange creatures like griffins and manticores should have been mutated and then exposed to the "tyrant" virus, which eventually caused the genetic evolution in their bodies to become what they are today.