Natale's Tumblr

(from https://www.deadlymelodic.com/iron-lung)

It's affirmed that the Blood has DNA, or at least something that ressembles it. Human blood aka erythrocytes, the actual red blood cells, don't contain DNA or anything, really. Its single function is carry oxygen. Erythrocytes from BIRDS, however, do contain DNA.

The molecular structure contains hemoglobin and is associated with a nucleobase, meaning, something that contains nitrogen as basis, BUT its NOT like the nucleotides in our DNA. I need to HEAVILY brush off on my Biochemistry knowledge to make a deeper analysis on it, but making some rapidly comparisons, right picture: on the left side of the picture, it seems to have the molecule Adenine (one of the nucleotides of our DNA), alongside a molecule that in no way ressemble the desoxyribose molecule found in human DNA, with no phosphate (1 phosphorus + 4 oxygen). On the right side... I can see it contains carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hidrogen, it has alcohol molecules, but that's it. It's nitrogen based, but I have no ideia what it ressembles, I'll need to break it down in details.

It performs celular lysis like a malignant cancer, meaning: it breaks the cell membrane as a malignant cancer does to healthy cells around it. This is what started happening with Simon after seeing the Light: the blood was destroying the cell membranes it come into contact with. This, I think, may explain why the blood didn't dissolve ANY of the SMs or the towboat or anything: it's not acidic, it's destroying cell membranes and that's a very different thing.

The blood itself does not seem to be ploripotent, but it seems to give this ability to cells it comes into contact with. What is ploripotent? Means that the cell goes back to a previous state where it can become any type of tissue, depending on what DNA is activated. Stem cells are ploripotent.

They still needed to test if the Blood was transferring DNA information through mRNA => RNA another type of molecule, before DNA in evolutive terms, with similar functions to DNA, with mRNA being a way to carry the information of a gene that is to be expressed. They didn't know if the blood was able to do this, or if the ability was destroyed after.

My guess at this moment is: on the orders of the Red Eyed God, the blood destroys the cell membrane, gets into contact with the DNA and then hijacks the genes to do whatever it wants. This MAY imply some things, especially if the blood doesn't use mRNA after and it is destroyed: whatever someone is turned into, it's born of manipulating already existing DNA a body contains, be this to mutate or metamorphosis. Right now, I find hightly unlikely that the blood would be able to give Simon or any other human characteristics outside of the realm of vertebrate animals. This also may explain why the Eel has so many arms and legs: even if only one person, the info for these would be inside the DNA, and let me tell, once you look at developmental biology and how cell placement is important in embryos, beyond the ploripotent ability of stem cells, to determine where members grow, you learn that biology is REALLY fucked up and insane (mess around with the embryo cells in a fly and you have wings where there should be feed, for example).

This may explain why the blood behaves as it does once inside the SM: as far as I remember right now, it's fleshy looking and can make Simon stick to things (by destroying cell membranes), but nothing specific => it may be using dead skin cells Simon shed during his time in the SM, but the DNA inside these is probably degraded and not much for it to work with, BUT it can easily mutate Simon. The blood NEEDS organic material and DNA of others, because whatever DNA it contains, doesn't seem to be enough on its own.