Secret Records of the Leader of the Beichen Sword Sect-Chapter 847 - 438: Virus_2
Tongsheng glanced at him sideways,
"Could it be you sent them to capture me?"
San Lang curled his lip,
"Is that possible? If my words were that effective, I would have fled the country ages ago. Don’t think about it; this project is now under the watch of the Federation’s main office. Everyone in Weiyuan with related experience has been gathered to work on it. You have real talent and learning; do you really think you can escape?"
Tongsheng sighed, watching the video beside him that repeatedly played the silent footage of researchers melting into a bloody swamp of flesh.
"So what exactly is this? Is it really an infectious disease? It surely can’t be Ebola, this thing already looks like a horror movie..."
San Lang shrugged,
"Who do you expect me to ask? But for now, the situation is temporarily stable, at least I haven’t fused with my dad, have I?
Alright, alright, anyway, don’t worry, for now I still hold the title of academician, responsible for onsite management.
We were classmates, I won’t arrange for you to collect samples in heavily contaminated areas, just do data analysis in the laboratory."
"...Thank you."
Tongsheng finally breathed a sigh of relief, after all, the unspeakable virus is frightening, but laboratory work was something he had long been accustomed to.
Previously, his core work at the BSL-4 lab concentrated on handling and analyzing highly pathogenic virus samples. And this military base seems to have originally been a high-specification laboratory, and now with various equipment and instruments continuously sent by the Federation, though it’s called a military base, it’s actually more like a testing center.
So Tongsheng proceeded without needing any instructions, and skillfully began his daily routine. Since nobody knows what this thing is, they just treat it as virus processing, sampling RNA for real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR, determining viral load variation through Ct value, growth curves, electron microscopy photos, all raw data are entered real-time into the cloud system of the lab, periodically reporting virus stability experiment results he’s in charge of.
Hmm... but you know, this does seem a bit like a filovirus actually...
Though most researchers now focus on nuclear radiation, due to Tongsheng’s professional experience, he thinks it could actually be a type of filovirus. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
Filoviruses belong to the filoviridae family, under the Mononegavirales order of single-stranded negative-sense RNA viruses, infecting vertebrates, with their virions enveloped in viral membrane. As implied by the name, the virus is filamentous in form, with possibly branched morphologies, U-shaped, 6-shaped or circular, with surface nodular protrusions, scattered in the lipid bilayer membrane.
Filoviruses directly infect vascular endothelial cells via surface glycoproteins, leading to structural damage and functional disorder of cells. After endothelial damage, vascular permeability increases, plasma exudation, causing tissue edema and hypotension.
Virus infection triggers coagulation cascade reactions, leading to massive consumption of platelets and clotting factors, while the fibrinolytic system is excessively activated, causing widespread hemorrhage.
Through direct damage to vascular endothelium, activation of coagulation system, causing excessive immune response and multi-organ failure, the virus induces hemorrhage. These processes are interlinked, ultimately manifesting as severe hemorrhagic symptoms and high mortality.
These symptoms indeed closely resemble those emerging in the base, except the speed and extent of bleeding are too exaggerated, human bodies break like balloons with one stab.
Moreover, the critical aspect is not merely the symptoms, but the virus itself. Through laser confocal microscopy captured virus-cell colocalization images, Tongsheng spotted leftover virus samples in collected residue. But instead of being filamentous, they appeared ’character-like.’
Yes, perhaps professors and doctoral supervisors would say he lost his mind, but to Tongsheng it seemed this virus was like some epidemic Demon God, writing a distorted Chinese character with RNA, excessively twisted like ancient seal characters, talisman painting, truly hard to decipher.
Hence Tongsheng tried to find these ’characters’ in the virus samples one by one, conducting focused cultivation experiments, yet fell into deeper enigma.
Contrary to his conjecture, this clearly wasn’t purely a filovirus, but instead carried characteristics somewhat akin to retroviruses.
On one hand, it releases dissolving enzymes like filoviruses, destroying cell membrane integrity, eroding host vascular systems, leading to membrane structure collapse.
On the other hand, it resembles retroviruses, with reverse transcriptase components converting virus RNA into DNA, incorporating its coded information into the host’s cellular DNA, thereby commandeering the cell’s lifecycle.
This dual intrusion allows the virus to breach traditional single-mode infection, potentially fully permeating and invading human circulatory systems in hours, or possibly just minutes at high concentrations.
Upon invading the organism, its surface proteins bind specifically to receptors on vascular endothelial cells, causing cell membrane dissolution. Simultaneously, the virus-carried reverse transcriptase transforms virus RNA to DNA and integrates it into the host’s cellular genome.
This integration not only permits long-term viral latency but crucially grants precise control over host cellular metabolic pathways, even enabling self-selection in dissolution disintegration and aggregation regeneration, choosing proliferation or apoptosis based on surrounding environmental states and nutrient content.
Yes, judging from collected samples, this virus surprisingly seems capable of self-determining survival and death, as though possessing some level of self-awareness.
