secure tgirl wizard

But DNA isn’t a Blueprint; it’s DNA. No matter what context you put a Blueprint in, it won’t do certain things. It won’t spontaneously duplicate itself; DNA will. A Blueprint isn’t gonna curl up into a ball and roll away on you. A Blueprint can’t fragment in half and become a rogue construction firm cranking out half-formed cabinets. DNA can and will do these and stranger things. DNA is alive

Anyway a lot of “viruses” are just. Chunks of more complex living things that broke free. Also big chunks of our own genome are just “viruses” that. got stuck. Kinda. It’s not bad! Our Immune System uses those bits for target practice and wargaming. Pretty neat actually. Humans are very advanced under the hood as it turns out.

@merlions YEA THAT

So like. One of the most common causes of severe respiratory infection in human infants is RSV, which is this little asshat that prints messenger RNA directly off itself, no cellular apparatus needed.

Those messengers encode for F-Proteins, which in eukaryotes let us stitch together the membranes of individual cells into long multinucleate super-cells, which is necessary for making superstructures like neuron networks and muscle fibers. In RSV, it starts just… stitching lung cells together, which is. Pathological.

Did this shit just. break off from one of our ancestors? Is RSV a rogue piece of the self-replicating machinery that is us, or did we steal the trick from another, older virus?

Archaeovirology is a study both occult (difficult to discern) and arcane (of concern to few) so the truth of the ancient origins of these viruses may never be known. There are obstacles.

We are worlds onto ourselves. Colony ships. Living divine machinery. The pieces, they move. Right down to the DNA.

I sit and think about it a lot, in the quiet hours. What we’re made of. How we work. Complicated. So many fiddily little parts.