Any microbiologists out there?

Hikari: There are many factors that advance and decelerate innovation. Society allows us to be self centric, if it did not and was very driven instead we could be 1000 years ahead right now.

Xordium: What I need to happen does mean it will be like a retrovirus but in the form of a microbe. I just need to know how quickly something like this could spread as I need a logical time frame for this lay dormant until a trigger starts a more physical change.
 
FunkyCowie said:
How long would it take for the 'Humans' all over the planet to show significant levels in their systems enough to be noticeable to modern mediciene?
Click to expand...

What do you mean by this?

By going looking in the living people? Or looking in their corpses? How are they looking and why? Do they know it might be there?

The growth rates of microbes are limited by resources, competition and getting eaten by various things. What is the microbe doing on this front?
 
FunkyCowie said:
Xordium: What I need to happen does mean it will be like a retrovirus but in the form of a microbe. I just need to know how quickly something like this could spread as I need a logical time frame for this lay dormant until a trigger starts a more physical change.
Click to expand...

Microbes don't integrate their genetic material in that manner though. Any bacteria/protozoa etc inside the body will be attacked by the bodies immune system and therefore how exactly are you going to test for it across a population - in one place everyone will be "over" it whereas in other just contracting it. I would be less worried about the potential spread and worry more about the plausibility of what you described.

Bacteria and protozoa in the actual body (excluding the GI tract) is actually a bad thing and a big thing. They are never really benign and will generally be more damaging than viruses.
 
Last edited:
Gut commensal spread was what I was thinking of as the simpliest explanation for spread by rain and worlds waterways, could populate a globe in one or two years.

Viral integration by your suggestion is a nice one, just the delivery host might need altered from the 1000lites of tripe one.
 
ok... what would you suggest for something that can lay apparently dormant for about 6-12k years, spread relatively easily and insert genetic material within a race with out noticeably affecting it and not being attacked by any immune system?
 
FunkyCowie said:
ok... what would you suggest for something that can lay apparently dormant for about 6-12k years, spread relatively easily and insert genetic material within a race with out noticeably affecting it and not being attacked by any immune system?
Click to expand...

Well, you're pretty much talking retrovirus. If it periodically exhibits cold-like symptoms, it could spread pretty fast without anyone ever realising it was anything more than the sniffles. Meanwhile the virus spreads slowly through the body until when it reaches the brain/heart/testicles it activates the second part of the payload and does? You could pseudo-waffle it with some kind of reference to promoter elements.
 
FunkyCowie said:
ok... what would you suggest for something that can lay apparently dormant for about 6-12k years, spread relatively easily and insert genetic material within a race with out noticeably affecting it and not being attacked by any immune system?
Click to expand...

What I said. No reason it could not be in an organism lying dormant in the ice caps - then infecting people due to it being dug up - then said people getting its genetic material spliced into the human DNA.

For all the help we are giving you we want Hovis in your story somewhere.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Gut commensal spread was what I was thinking of as the simpliest explanation for spread by rain and worlds waterways, could populate a globe in one or two years.
Click to expand...

I thought of that one then thought maybe readers may not want to read interesting pages about the heroes testing stool samples! :D
 
Xordium said:
I thought of that one then thought maybe readers may not want to read interesting pages about the heroes testing stool samples! :D
Click to expand...

Lets just say they have strange smelling poo...
Poo that is odd to the discovers, but the people who for 12k years have always 'smelt' like that see nothing wrong with pooing roses from their commensal gut bacteria.
 
FunkyCowie said:
Could a retro virus be carried in sporing fungus?
Click to expand...

In principle, yes, but it's a very unlikely concept. You'd need a virus that is capable of infecting both humans and a fungus. As fair as I know there are no viruses that have host ranges anything like that diverse. Viruses have very small genomes so they need to be quite closely keyed to their hosts; which is why we catch viruses from chimps and cows but not barley and carrots.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom