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.
Im glad barriers never break and we will be fine forever.
Prions don’t evolve, so in this case it’s mostly true.
Well, there are some theories of CWD causing Creutzfeldt-Jakob-Disease in unusually young patients and there are some concerns/doubts about the actual barrier believed to protect us, so that’s fun.
Well isn’t that neat!
Fun fact: i have several gallons of hard liqour at hand!
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
Mammals wouldn’t have a chorioallantoic placenta at all if not for a virus integrated into our genome. Mapping when in evolution the genes responsible for placental development first appeared was my first participation in scientific research, so I love this topic.
I vaguely remember something about organelles inside a cell used to be seperate entities too
Mitochondria, for sure. They even still have their own DNA separate from your actual human DNA.
Yeah but they didn’t use to be viruses, they used to be bacteria.
And they didn’t integrate into human genome. They’re just another foreign body that lives inside human cells, but they have their own genome still.
Can you send the paper? Please. 🥺
“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
