The biological back story to Natural selection
Hybridclaw
Join Date: 2003-11-03 Member: 22271Members
Join Date: 2003-11-03 Member: 22271Members
<div class="IPBDescription">it would be nice to see some of these ideas in NS2</div>This was orginally suppose to be a response to this thread:
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/forums/index.php?showtopic=102943" target="_blank">New research on asexual organisms?</a>
But I started to go really far off topic and rant, so I made it into a new topic. There are probably a bunch or redundancies because I was typing as quickly as ideas came into my head.
I always thought that each bacterium cell contained the genome for every organism and structure. This would allow undifferentiated bacterium to specialize into anything from a skulk, to a gorge, to a defense chamber, to a hive quite easily. (By easily I mean with out the constant need of continuously mutating until it finds the right genetic sequence). Assuming this is true, then bacterium have an ability that no know organism (at least none that I know of) can do: consciously choose which segment of its DNA it wants to express.
We can also assume that the bacterium can differentiate extremely quickly. A gorge is capable of turning a mass of raw bacterium into an upgrade chamber very quickly. This implies that bacterium cells are extremely complicated especially in how they communicate with each other. They probably have better method of communication then direct cell to cell contact or hormonal signaling. This advanced signaling is also seen in the relationship between the kharaa and defense chambers. By standing next to one of these chambers, the defense chamber can innately heal the kharaa without and form of visual of verbal communication.
Each bacterial cell is probably more metabolically complex than prokaryotic cells and more internally complex then eukaryotes. This is because not only can bacterial form colonies, like prokaryotes, but they can also form multi-cellular life forms like eukaryotes.
Not only can the bacterium easily differentiate but it is also capable of assimilating the DNA of other organisms. In the old manual for NS it was stated that the fade was once a primate like animal and had it not been for the bacterium, it may have evolved into an even more human like creature. This is further supported by the fact that the fade is a different color from all of the other organisms with patches of infestation all over it. Since the fade is primate in origin, the bacterium has no need of assimilating human DNA because taking in the DNA of another primate would be redundant. Each life form in the Kharaa arsenal is either the result of is own evolution of a heavily modified assimilated organism.
The ability for bacterium to contain the genetic information of many (potentially hundreds) of organisms if further supported by the back story of the maps. The back story behind the map NS_Origin, was that it was space station being used as a research facility designed to house and study the Kharaa (though given the layout of the map, many small air vents where bacterium could escape, Origin was probably a space station used for other purposes and then converted into a research facility). Biodome was where they were kept. The scientists there where overwhelmed when the Kharaa created hives and Onoses, both of which had never been seen before.
The hive was probably the result of the bacterium not being able to form vertebrate life forms (assuming that the kharaa are vertebrates) quickly enough on its own. Without the hive, the Kharaa probably had to form some kind of amniotic sac on the ground to form skulks; this leaves them very vulnerable and would probably draw the attention of scientists to investigate. The other possibility is that bacterium would differentiate and aggregate into a skulk underwater, which would be much more plausible than an amniotic sac on the ground, but not all maps have water. Once the bacterium realized that the above two options were no longer usable, the hive would have to be put up. The hive is a larger organism with an extremely enlarged womb. Given the amount of time it would take for evolution to create such a creature, odds are the hive was a structure that evolved long ago.
Another why the hive cannot be used unless it is absolutely necessary is that, once creates, the bacterium become dependent on the hive. By destroying the hive, the more advance bacterial life forms then slowly die. This could indicate that creation of a hive is more than an incubator, but changes the physiology of all kharaa. My theory is that without the hive, each Kharaa needs to eat. But the creation of the hive takes over this function. The hive changes the bacterial network to deliver nutrients to each alien. This means that the aliens no longer need a digestive tract. With less internal organs the Kharaa can take immense amounts of damage without dying. The steady stream of nutrients and new cells could also be why the kharaa can self heal.
A lack of internal organs will also be less of a resource strain than animals that have internal organs. This means that the hive can also create more efficient management of resources. No internal organs make the Kharaa comparable to sea sponges. Sea sponges can be run through a sieve and, instead of dying, the sea sponge can reform itself. Likewise when the kharaa are shot up into little pieces, the bacterium that made up each alien reenters the bacterial network instead of dying. Without the hive the death of a skulk could have been a massive loss of resources for the entire bacterial network.
The kharaa may not need to breathe though. When shot all aliens bleed green blood. Blood is usually red because of the presence of hemoglobin, which is a red color. Hemoglobin is responsible for carrying oxygen and since alien blood is not red, they do not need oxygen.
The onos and the fade are exceptions to this. The onos has a digestive system, making it slightly more vulnerable to damage. But its ability to quickly extract and use nutrients from what it eats makes up for this. The bacterium also tried to compensate for this weakness by placing a large protective boney plate in front of its head. Still the onos is affected by the death of the hive. This means that the digestive tract of the onos works too fast and it would need a steady stream of food to live. The acid in the acid rocket from fades is a result of the organism living on its shoulder, distilling and spitting out stomach acid. This means that the fade has at least a partial digestive tract. It makes up for this weakness with the ability to self heal and quickly move out of danger.
By taking up the function of the internal organs the creation of a hive essentially makes the kharaa a large multi-brained and multi-conscienced animal. By defending the hive, the kharaa are essentially defending parts of their own body.
The reason why the hive can’t create Onoses directly is because they are too much of a time and cost investment. In the time it takes to create one Onos, the hive could create many more skulks.
Since an Onos can devolve back into a skulk, bacterium can perform another function that nothing on Earth can. It can undifferentiate its cells into a “stem cell.†We can say this because an Onos turning into a skulk would leave an excess of organic material. This material turns back into normal bacterium and reenters the bacterial network. The ability to quickly undifferntiate and redifferentiate is also supported by the use of movement chambers and the redemption upgrade. Instead of moving the organism, the creature is turned back into a mass of cells in one area, the bacterial network then quickly relays the information to destination and then the organism is recreated by the cells in that area. (It would be a nice visual in NS2, when the kharaa teleports, it first turns into a mass of infestation and then infestation then turns back into a Kharaa on the other end).
But since movement chamber do not actually move the entire creature this further supports the idea of advanced cellular communication. Information is “hormonally†communicated to the destination, the skill and memories of that creature is transferred by this method. This also occurs when the organism dies the living cells can communicate with the hive telling it to create a skulk with this specific set of skills. I use the term “hormonally†loosely because if Bacterium communicates through the use of hormones, we would eventually end up with all organisms with the same skill level.
These differences in cell communication are probably due to natural variation among the species. The better the cell communication, the more skilled the organism is the better its chances of survival. (A back story to why babblers are no longer in the game perhaps?) Cell that can’t effectively communicate the memories of the organism that it once made up won’t be used to create new aliens and will die off. The bacterium that made up babblers, though easy to mold, created ineffective alien and were eventually no longer used.
Bacterium cells not only communicate with each other, but also have limited communication with cells of the other species. This is seen in the scent of fear upgrade, where aliens know where the marines are. In the older version of the game, scent of fear only picked up on marines that were injured, probably by picking up on the chemicals that are released in the human blood stream when they are attempting to heal their wounds. The fact that aliens can now see all marines is probably due to the natural evolution of the kharaa making them more susceptible to human hormones.
The ability for the hive to create skulks and for the gorge to create pseudo-skulks indicates there was a common ancestor between the hive and the gorge. Or the hive could simply be an extremely enlarged gorge. (It would be an interesting game play element in NS2 though, having a gorge turn into a hive). The hive would then be the result of quickly modifying a gorge into a hive as a desperate attempt to create more skulks. This can’t be true though because the hive takes control over the nutritional needs of the kharaa, something that the gorge doesn’t do.
Multiple hives then allow for a greater supply of nutrients and energy to the each alien. If hive taps into bacterial network to supply nutrients to the aliens, each additional hive can then provide more nutrients to each alien. This would allow them to use more powerful attacks which would otherwise put a strain the bacterial network if there was only one hive.
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/forums/index.php?showtopic=102943" target="_blank">New research on asexual organisms?</a>
But I started to go really far off topic and rant, so I made it into a new topic. There are probably a bunch or redundancies because I was typing as quickly as ideas came into my head.
I always thought that each bacterium cell contained the genome for every organism and structure. This would allow undifferentiated bacterium to specialize into anything from a skulk, to a gorge, to a defense chamber, to a hive quite easily. (By easily I mean with out the constant need of continuously mutating until it finds the right genetic sequence). Assuming this is true, then bacterium have an ability that no know organism (at least none that I know of) can do: consciously choose which segment of its DNA it wants to express.
We can also assume that the bacterium can differentiate extremely quickly. A gorge is capable of turning a mass of raw bacterium into an upgrade chamber very quickly. This implies that bacterium cells are extremely complicated especially in how they communicate with each other. They probably have better method of communication then direct cell to cell contact or hormonal signaling. This advanced signaling is also seen in the relationship between the kharaa and defense chambers. By standing next to one of these chambers, the defense chamber can innately heal the kharaa without and form of visual of verbal communication.
Each bacterial cell is probably more metabolically complex than prokaryotic cells and more internally complex then eukaryotes. This is because not only can bacterial form colonies, like prokaryotes, but they can also form multi-cellular life forms like eukaryotes.
Not only can the bacterium easily differentiate but it is also capable of assimilating the DNA of other organisms. In the old manual for NS it was stated that the fade was once a primate like animal and had it not been for the bacterium, it may have evolved into an even more human like creature. This is further supported by the fact that the fade is a different color from all of the other organisms with patches of infestation all over it. Since the fade is primate in origin, the bacterium has no need of assimilating human DNA because taking in the DNA of another primate would be redundant. Each life form in the Kharaa arsenal is either the result of is own evolution of a heavily modified assimilated organism.
The ability for bacterium to contain the genetic information of many (potentially hundreds) of organisms if further supported by the back story of the maps. The back story behind the map NS_Origin, was that it was space station being used as a research facility designed to house and study the Kharaa (though given the layout of the map, many small air vents where bacterium could escape, Origin was probably a space station used for other purposes and then converted into a research facility). Biodome was where they were kept. The scientists there where overwhelmed when the Kharaa created hives and Onoses, both of which had never been seen before.
The hive was probably the result of the bacterium not being able to form vertebrate life forms (assuming that the kharaa are vertebrates) quickly enough on its own. Without the hive, the Kharaa probably had to form some kind of amniotic sac on the ground to form skulks; this leaves them very vulnerable and would probably draw the attention of scientists to investigate. The other possibility is that bacterium would differentiate and aggregate into a skulk underwater, which would be much more plausible than an amniotic sac on the ground, but not all maps have water. Once the bacterium realized that the above two options were no longer usable, the hive would have to be put up. The hive is a larger organism with an extremely enlarged womb. Given the amount of time it would take for evolution to create such a creature, odds are the hive was a structure that evolved long ago.
Another why the hive cannot be used unless it is absolutely necessary is that, once creates, the bacterium become dependent on the hive. By destroying the hive, the more advance bacterial life forms then slowly die. This could indicate that creation of a hive is more than an incubator, but changes the physiology of all kharaa. My theory is that without the hive, each Kharaa needs to eat. But the creation of the hive takes over this function. The hive changes the bacterial network to deliver nutrients to each alien. This means that the aliens no longer need a digestive tract. With less internal organs the Kharaa can take immense amounts of damage without dying. The steady stream of nutrients and new cells could also be why the kharaa can self heal.
A lack of internal organs will also be less of a resource strain than animals that have internal organs. This means that the hive can also create more efficient management of resources. No internal organs make the Kharaa comparable to sea sponges. Sea sponges can be run through a sieve and, instead of dying, the sea sponge can reform itself. Likewise when the kharaa are shot up into little pieces, the bacterium that made up each alien reenters the bacterial network instead of dying. Without the hive the death of a skulk could have been a massive loss of resources for the entire bacterial network.
The kharaa may not need to breathe though. When shot all aliens bleed green blood. Blood is usually red because of the presence of hemoglobin, which is a red color. Hemoglobin is responsible for carrying oxygen and since alien blood is not red, they do not need oxygen.
The onos and the fade are exceptions to this. The onos has a digestive system, making it slightly more vulnerable to damage. But its ability to quickly extract and use nutrients from what it eats makes up for this. The bacterium also tried to compensate for this weakness by placing a large protective boney plate in front of its head. Still the onos is affected by the death of the hive. This means that the digestive tract of the onos works too fast and it would need a steady stream of food to live. The acid in the acid rocket from fades is a result of the organism living on its shoulder, distilling and spitting out stomach acid. This means that the fade has at least a partial digestive tract. It makes up for this weakness with the ability to self heal and quickly move out of danger.
By taking up the function of the internal organs the creation of a hive essentially makes the kharaa a large multi-brained and multi-conscienced animal. By defending the hive, the kharaa are essentially defending parts of their own body.
The reason why the hive can’t create Onoses directly is because they are too much of a time and cost investment. In the time it takes to create one Onos, the hive could create many more skulks.
Since an Onos can devolve back into a skulk, bacterium can perform another function that nothing on Earth can. It can undifferentiate its cells into a “stem cell.†We can say this because an Onos turning into a skulk would leave an excess of organic material. This material turns back into normal bacterium and reenters the bacterial network. The ability to quickly undifferntiate and redifferentiate is also supported by the use of movement chambers and the redemption upgrade. Instead of moving the organism, the creature is turned back into a mass of cells in one area, the bacterial network then quickly relays the information to destination and then the organism is recreated by the cells in that area. (It would be a nice visual in NS2, when the kharaa teleports, it first turns into a mass of infestation and then infestation then turns back into a Kharaa on the other end).
But since movement chamber do not actually move the entire creature this further supports the idea of advanced cellular communication. Information is “hormonally†communicated to the destination, the skill and memories of that creature is transferred by this method. This also occurs when the organism dies the living cells can communicate with the hive telling it to create a skulk with this specific set of skills. I use the term “hormonally†loosely because if Bacterium communicates through the use of hormones, we would eventually end up with all organisms with the same skill level.
These differences in cell communication are probably due to natural variation among the species. The better the cell communication, the more skilled the organism is the better its chances of survival. (A back story to why babblers are no longer in the game perhaps?) Cell that can’t effectively communicate the memories of the organism that it once made up won’t be used to create new aliens and will die off. The bacterium that made up babblers, though easy to mold, created ineffective alien and were eventually no longer used.
Bacterium cells not only communicate with each other, but also have limited communication with cells of the other species. This is seen in the scent of fear upgrade, where aliens know where the marines are. In the older version of the game, scent of fear only picked up on marines that were injured, probably by picking up on the chemicals that are released in the human blood stream when they are attempting to heal their wounds. The fact that aliens can now see all marines is probably due to the natural evolution of the kharaa making them more susceptible to human hormones.
The ability for the hive to create skulks and for the gorge to create pseudo-skulks indicates there was a common ancestor between the hive and the gorge. Or the hive could simply be an extremely enlarged gorge. (It would be an interesting game play element in NS2 though, having a gorge turn into a hive). The hive would then be the result of quickly modifying a gorge into a hive as a desperate attempt to create more skulks. This can’t be true though because the hive takes control over the nutritional needs of the kharaa, something that the gorge doesn’t do.
Multiple hives then allow for a greater supply of nutrients and energy to the each alien. If hive taps into bacterial network to supply nutrients to the aliens, each additional hive can then provide more nutrients to each alien. This would allow them to use more powerful attacks which would otherwise put a strain the bacterial network if there was only one hive.
Comments
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The kharaa may not need to breathe though. When shot all aliens bleed green blood. Blood is usually red because of the presence of hemoglobin, which is a red color. Hemoglobin is responsible for carrying oxygen and since alien blood is not red, they do not need oxygen.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not quite. Kharaa do need to breath, at least they did in NS1. If you went under water for a while you died. Hemoglobin is red, which is what causes blood to be red, this is because hemoglobin contains high amounts of iron. However there are many animals on earth that dont have hemolobin and do have green blood and do breathe. Notable examples are many lizards.