Ferocious face, pale skin, flying with bats in the night, biting humans with sharp teeth, sucking their blood... This is the famous fantasy creature vampire.
You may have seen some stories about vampires. Some of them are born vampires, and some are bitten by vampires to become vampires, but in the movie "Dr. Night: Morbius", the protagonist was originally a vampire. A sickly ordinary human who turned himself into a vampire using high-tech means. In reality, is this possible?
Talented scholar turns into bloodthirsty monster
When Morbius regained consciousness, the horror in front of him terrified him: the assistant collapsed on the ground, the other crew members died tragically, covered in blood, and the cabin was covered with huge claw marks... He checked the surveillance video of the cargo ship and found the murderer It's him!
In the video, he saw himself dodging bullets, flying over eaves and walls; his teeth and fingernails were sharp and long, and his face was hideous. It turned out that the experiment not only restored him to health, but also turned him into a monster, whose survival instinct made him attack humans uncontrollably and suck their blood.
Since then, Morbius has become a vampire, known as "Dr. Night".
A life betting experiment
Michael Morbius was born and raised in Greece. He is very intelligent, but suffers from a rare blood disease and is so weak that he relies on crutches to walk.
In order to cure himself and others suffering from the same disease, he studied hard and became a world-renowned expert in biochemistry. After years of research, he finally found a silver lining.
Mobius hired people to capture a group of vampire bats in the Amazon rainforest and extracted blood and other components from the bats. On a freighter, Morbius fell into a coma after assistants injected the ingredients into his body. It's a crazy experiment, if it fails, he dies; if it succeeds, he can be reborn.
However, something unexpected happened.
Doctor Night's Superpowers
Strengthening physical strength
It can lift heavy objects of more than 600 kg, and can easily destroy heavy metal doors.
Glide:
Bones become partially hollow, allowing him to quickly jump between walls or glide through the air with air currents.
Echolocation After
Morbius transforms, his ears also become bat ears. He can send out ultrasonic waves. When the ultrasonic waves hit obstacles, they will be reflected back and received by the ears, thus reflecting the size and distance of the obstacles. Ordinary bats can only detect a distance of a few meters to a dozen meters, but Dr. Dark Night can detect the entire city.
Self-regeneration
Gunshot wounds and knife wounds heal in minutes to hours, but cannot regenerate missing limbs or organs.
Commanding the bat swarm Doctor
Night is regarded as a kind of bat. He can communicate with the bat using ultrasonic waves and command the bat swarm to help him fly or attack the enemy.
Morbius can maintain his human appearance when he is not using his abilities, but once he has not ingested human blood for more than 6 hours, he will become weak, then go mad and start attacking humans indiscriminately.
The hearing range of the human ear is between 20 and 20,000 Hz. When the frequency of sound waves exceeds 20,000 Hz, humans will not be able to hear it. This is ultrasound. Bats can hear sounds up to 200,000 Hz.
Do bats suck human blood?
There are more than 1,100 kinds of bats in the world, only 3 species are specialized in sucking blood, and the rest mostly feed on insects or plants. Vampire bats live in Central and South America and feed mainly on the blood of cows, horses and birds, and occasionally human blood. Vampire bats are tiny, sucking only a teaspoon of blood at a time, but their bites can cause serious wound infections and can transmit rabies.
vampire disease
There are no vampires in reality, but humans look like vampires after suffering from a disease called porphyria (bĒ lĆn). Due to a lack of heme in the blood, patients often have pale, fragile skin that blisters in the sun; their gums tend to shrink, making their teeth appear longer and more pointed than the average person. Also, blood transfusions do relieve symptoms in people with porphyria.
Viruses modify human genes
In the movie, Morbius uses a bat to cure his disease. How did he do it? Simply put, he modified his genes with viruses.
Each organism has specific genes, and they pass them on to their offspring. In an organism, cells are like mini factories. The factories operate according to the "instructions" of genes to produce various products and control the development and normal operation of the body.
Viruses are very special. They only have instructions and packaging boxes (proteins) and no cellular structure. With such a simple body, they can infect organisms and make them sick. There is another special kind of virus called "retrovirus". After they invade the cells, they will quietly add their own genes to the host genes, allowing the host cells to produce the next generation of viruses for themselves, which is simply a super biohacker. If used wisely, retroviruses can be tools for modifying genes.
In reality, will Morbius succeed?
Morbius suffers from a congenital disease in which part of his genes is faulty, preventing him from synthesizing blood properly. And he discovered a retrovirus in bats that replaces its own faulty genes with bat-specific genes.
So he injected bat blood extracts containing the virus into the body, allowing the cells to gradually become infected with the virus, replacing the faulty genes in each cell, and eventually returning to health. Unexpectedly, while replacing the faulty gene, the retrovirus also added some other bat genes, making him mutated into a vampire with bat characteristics.
However, in the real world, Morbius cannot become a vampire, because the genes are far more complex than what is presented in the movie.
nuclear library
Genes do not exist alone in cells. Most of our cells have a structure called the nucleus, which is the equivalent of a magnificent library. Inside the nucleus are 23 pairs of chromosomes, equivalent to 23 partitions in a library; each chromosome consists of a long strand of DNA, like a long row of bookshelves. And there are at least more than 20,000 manuals, that is, more than 20,000 genes are scattered in different bookshelves.
Different genes affect different aspects of biological characteristics, such as skin color, single eyelid, height and so on. Some traits are determined by only one gene, but most traits are controlled by multiple genes. For example, human hair color is affected by at least 124 genes.
The bones, muscles, blood, eyes, and ears of Mobius have all changed. Where are the instructions corresponding to these characteristics, humans have not yet studied clearly, let alone viruses.
Which variation routine is stronger?
In addition to Doctor Night, there are several superheroes who have acquired special abilities through genetic mutation.
Spider-Man: Bitten by a Mutant Spider
A young man named Peter Parker was bitten by a mutated spider while visiting the exhibition. A substance injected by the spider changed Parker's genes. He became strong overnight, and his palms and soles grew. Tiny hooks that allow him to attach to walls and climb.
The creation of Spider-Man may be similar to that of Doctor Night, both of which were genetically altered by retroviruses. But if they were actually infected with the virus, the result would be sickness.
Fantastic Four: Experiencing Cosmic Ray Radiation
The four protagonists were originally astronauts. During a space expedition, the space station they were in was engulfed by violent cosmic rays, which mutated their genes, and the four acquired different superpowers.
Cosmic rays penetrate the cell, breaking the DNA strand, and the cell then activates emergency mechanisms to repair the DNA, but cannot fully restore the previous DNA, resulting in mutations.
Scientists do use ultraviolet light and gamma rays to induce genetic mutations, but this method is mainly used for plants and microorganisms that can reproduce in large numbers. Because the mutation caused by rays is completely random, just like tearing up a painting and putting it back together, the probability of putting it together is very low. With so many cells in the human body, it is even more unlikely that beneficial mutations in the DNA of all cells will occur in unison. If the Fantastic Four had been exposed to intense radiation in reality, the result would have been cancer.
selfish virus
Imagine if you were asked to enter a large library without any classification prompts and replace the old editions in the library with the new editions. Can you do that? What if you had to switch to hundreds of different books? And there are no rewards.
For Morbius to become a vampire, the virus has to find dozens to hundreds of "bat version instructions" needed to become a vampire, enter human cells, and find and replace the corresponding "human version instructions". This is impossible.
The only purpose of a virus is to reproduce. It doesn't matter if you get sick or die. If it can bring its own genes into the cell, it is successful. If it is not good for reproduction, why does it bother to help the host?
The billion-year war between organisms and viruses
Although viruses have never been well-meaning, organisms will continue to evolve in order to survive.
Scientists have found that ancient retroviruses were mixed into the genes of organisms 550 million years ago. In hundreds of millions of years of war, some species were defeated by the virus and died out; some species defeated and tamed the virus, making the virus gene lose its function, or evolved a new form to adapt to the symptoms brought by the virus, or even counteract the virus. Come and take advantage of these symptoms.
We have been transformed by viruses
The virus will not turn Morbius into a vampire, but each of us has long been transformed by it.
Today, 5% to 8% of human genes come from retroviruses. Most of them have lost their function and are called "junk DNA". Some viral genes are occasionally "resurrected", interfering with the expression of normal genes, but there are also many viral genes that play important roles, such as participating in placental development and adjusting immunity. It can even help cells resist other foreign viruses. It can be said that the virus has made us what we are today.
Genetic modification, feasible and not feasible
Although the movie tells a science fiction story, in reality, scientists can indeed change human genes through viruses. These viruses are not natural viruses, but after careful modification, they do not cause disease, and carry specific genes, which also contain information that guides the virus, allowing the virus to accurately find the defective gene and restore its function, or make the cell factory The creation of molecular drugs that can alleviate disease based on new genes is called gene therapy.
Some people even think that the genes of human embryos can be modified to change the appearance of people, or improve physical fitness, intelligence and so on. But this is very dangerous. Humans do not know enough about genes. It is very easy for embryos to die, or to suffer from congenital malformations and serious diseases. Even if it is technically possible, genetic modification will cause social injustice. Therefore, genetic modification for non-medical purposes is unethical and resisted by the scientific community.
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