Bruno's EEV entry (Round 11)

[Diamond]

For discussing on possible changes to Bruno's Round Eleven entry on the EEV.

[Sir Ironside]

What if it is biomechanical form of nanotech? A remotely programmable virus so to speak.

[Diamond]

What if it is biomechanical form of nanotech? A remotely programmable virus so to speak.

Why, so the Recyclers can get ahold of it and program it? :rolleyes: :D

[Sir Ironside]

Why, so the Recyclers can get ahold of it and program it? :rolleyes: :D

I don't think that would still be in the ecosystem anymore. Please, they would try to destroy it so that it wouldn't get out and cause more trouble.

[Big Tex]

What if it is biomechanical form of nanotech? A remotely programmable virus so to speak.

There is no tech but nanotech and Sir Ironside is its prophet

:D

[RCAF Brat]

What if it is biomechanical form of nanotech?

Believe it or not, a DNA based form of nanotechnology is actually almost doable right now. But apart from that, it wouldn't be a virus, just a machine that uses carefully arranged lengths of DNA as a framework/scaffold. the articles that I read were from 2007, but they were fascinating...

That said, an easily-modifiable virus and a nano-machine are quite different. So, no, it can't be a nano-machine.

A remotely programmable virus so to speak.

No.

--------

I think that the idea would work really well if it were a virus that was specifically targeted to cause a specific mutation. But it is also very easy to modify, so that many different mutations can be played with in a short period of time. You just have to make a specific virus for each type of mutation that you are experimenting with.

With nanoscale construction techniques and all of the other technologies available in 100 years, that should be very fast and very easy.

[Sir Ironside]

I'll go with what RCAF Brat came up with.

[Ran Exilis]

IMO this one only needs a little bit of tweaking here and there in order to make it work - the whole EEV virus is already close enough to the so-called virus vectors that are used in biotechnology today for that.

The relevant wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector) already mentions that they only use very cellspecific viruses for this, and that there's a common technique to render a vector virus incapable of reproducing on its own (which would destroy the cell) without a secondary infection with a helper virus.

Here's my suggestions; you could have that this particular virus vector was designed only to affect ripe ova and male germ cells, which should result in most of EEV's original effects, quite possibly including the increased virility (ripe ova and IIRC sperm-producing cells both produce significant quantities of hormones - an infection with this virus could easily 'tune up' the hormone production, which would be an advantage in its own right if this makes the subject more likely to mate and reproduce).

I'd personally leave out the stuff about the chance of an increased lifespan in the original host, though tuning up and keeping up the production of certain hormones (such as testosterone, IIRC) can mitigate the (or at least some) effects of old age, so that one's up to you.

Another suggestion is to have the EEV virus be a catalyst and vector for the transmission of mutations, rather than the actual cause. It's already possible today to create viruses that cut certain genes out of the host cell and 'stick' them back in other infected cells in exactly the same part of the chromosome.

With all those mutagens in the Nourikan environment, especially shortly after the fall, a virus that only 'cuts and pastes' large DNA sequences among its hosts would end up spreading huge numbers of mutations even without actually causing them.

And using the virus as a means to transmit mutations rather than the actual cause would coincidentally also result in a system that 'filters out' the very lethal mutations, btw - individual creatures with lethal mutations simply wouldn't reach sexual maturity, and therefore the virus would only really get the chance to infect people that happen to have non-lethal (or at least not very lethal) mutations.

It's propably also a good idea to write in that the original version of EEV required a helper virus in order to reproduce within its host, but that an accidental infection with a third, pathogenic virus in one of the test subjects resulted in a 'rogue' variety of EEV that could reproduce on its own, but still retained its gene-transmitting properties. As this (http://mstoneworks.net/Microbiology/ASMMamavirus.htm) article elaborates, such cross-infections are thought to play a major role in virus evolution.

This rogue strain of EEV is then quickly discovered and kept around for being an interesting anomaly, quite possibly for the purpose of studying virus evolution.

I reckon that it would require a pretty big, complex (possibly something not unlike the 'mamavirus' described in the article linker earlier) and heavily enhanced virus in order to transfer the fairly large amounts of DNA required to get the more interesting mutations - so a viable rogue strain of such a virus should be pretty interesting in its own right.

From there on, you could leave the stuff about the virus escaping into the environment on a few occasions largely intact.

Lastly, there's the issue of the virus' effectiveness in other species - viruses are by defenition very cell-specific, after all.

However, there's already plenty of zoonoses out there, and some viruses that cause infectious diseases in humans actually started out as viruses in arthropods or even plants. And with all the mutagens in the Nourikan environment (which, of course, affect viruses too), it shouldn't be a problem to handwave this a bit.

I'd just add in a footnote that the spread of EEV among other species is a bit 'spotty', with some species being very affected by the virus, many species being largely unaffected, and a sizeable number of species being affected irregularly or in weird ways.

[Bruno]

Okay--I'll do the necessary changes to it tomorrow.

[Diamond]

I think Ran's got some good points, but here's a couple of things to remember:

This whole thing is purely democratic, hence the poll. I've left it open for a few days. If the majority of people think it's fine the way it is, Bruno is certainly allowed to leave it alone. The same goes for any other 'challenge'.

Seeing as this is fiction, I think we're allowed a few lapses from hard science. The problem I have is when we start to get into wank-territory...