Chapter 43

"All humans have prions in their bodies."

"All of us here - myself included - have disease-causing prions in our bodies."

When Ai Qinglan announced this in the Evidence Department, everyone was frightened.

There was chaos in the Evidence Department.

Even Chen Feng looked panicked.

Only Song Shu was indifferent.

"Master, master, are we going to die? Did we accidentally get infected with the prion... Did we make a mistake in operation..."

"Shut up!" Song Shufu just slapped his disciple on the back of the head: "When did you hear that monks will die because of this kind of thing?"

"Eh?" The young apprentice was stunned.

Everyone looked up at Ai Qinglan: "Eh?"

"Well, that's right, every human race is born with prions." Ai Qinglan nodded, not feeling that there was something wrong with her wording: "It's just that the content is very low, and it probably doesn't cause disease." It’s like one ten thousandth of the amount.”

"ah?"

"Everyone is born with prions, and with the process of metabolism, physiological activities, and the synthesis of living things, the number of these prions will continue to increase." Ai Qinglan He said: "According to the cyclic amplification technology of prion, the growth of prion is basically exponential in the early and middle stages - that is, it is very slow in the early stage, but it becomes faster in the later stage. In After a certain point, it gets out of control.”

Some people shuddered quietly, as if they felt like there was some time bomb buried in their bodies.

Obviously my body is the same as before, but...it just feels so creepy and awkward.

"But?" Chen Feng understood the implication of Ai Qinglan's words: "You mean, in fact, this is nothing?"

"Because many people's lifetime accumulation of prions cannot exceed that threshold." Ai Qinglan said: "Ah, but the degradation of brain function after mortals age may have something to do with this, but I can definitely find that even for mortals, When you’re old, you won’t be able to accumulate such a huge amount.”

"Huge?" someone exclaimed.

Ai Qinglan smiled: "Compared to the standard of 'disease', the prion content in everyone's body can actually be ignored. If you want to accumulate prions in large quantities and cause disease, there is only one way. "

——That is, cannibalism.

Ai Qinglan didn't say it directly, but others probably guessed it.

Then I felt a little queasy.

Song Shufu had an expression of "Sure enough".

Meat and bone meal is an auxiliary feed developed by Beihuang herdsmen who are reluctant to discard dead animals that cannot be eaten.

He had long suspected that meat and bone meal was related to the emergence of Corpse Refining Horse Plague.

"What about the immortals?" Chen Feng asked: "If this kind of thing is accumulating in our bodies all the time, then in the bodies of the immortals, this kind of thing will one day exceed the threshold of 'disease', right?"

"Well, well, I did have this concern at first. But if you think about it carefully, no immortal will die from this disease, right?" Ai Qinglan hummed twice: "First of all, the prion body is The amount of prion in the human body has nothing to do with age. There is no significant difference between the prion content in a thousand-year-old monk and us. "

"I'm afraid that the prion body itself will also be lost with metabolism, and some non-specific immune functions can eliminate it. However, it should be noted that the monks in the Qi training stage, the Yuan Shen stage and the stronger Void Refining stage, in the body The difference in prion content is not obvious. I have a guess about this - I am afraid that our immune function does not have the ability to recognize it, so the enhanced non-specific immunity has a limited effect on prion clearance. It depends more on metabolism, right?”

Someone still scratched his arm uneasily: "It makes me feel a little uneasy after all..."

Ai Qinglan knocked on the table: "What are you afraid of? After all, you are monks! This thing can only destroy the brain at most. It is technically feasible to reshape the brain or continue to rebuild the body, right? "

Chen Feng was stunned.

He felt a sense of dissonance.

——Wait a minute, wait a minute...

——If this is the case, then...why does the Yuan clan kneel down so easily in front of Huang Jing?

But this is a core secret and not suitable for discussion.

And Ai Qinglan has already begun to explain the principles.

She casually used white light to form a winding curve, and marked a coordinate axis: "...the vertical axis represents energy, and the horizontal axis represents the different states of the long chain of amino acids."

A rope that is torqued will tangle into a ball or even get knotted - this is the tragedy of "knotted headphone cables" that people on earth often face. The reason is that the "rope" will automatically lead to a state with the lowest overall energy.

This is also determined by thermodynamics.

The same goes for long chains of amino acids. After external forces are exerted by messengers and organelles, it will also seek a state with the lowest energy.

"Logically speaking, it should accurately land on this location, 'Point A'." Ai Qinglan sighed: "But in fact... this process is random. It may not just land on 'Point A'. "As she spoke, Ai Qinglan stretched out her hand and painted a small curve in red: "It may fall on A, B, C, D, Wu, Ji, Gengxin or other more points - the number of points it can fall on is actually unlimited."

“But in fact, the tolerance of living things is very strong. No matter which point you land on, as long as the final result deviation is not too outrageous, then our flesh can still recognize it.”

“Among them, a certain point...ah, let's call it a 'prion point'.” Having said this, Ai Qinglan put a few blue dots on the red line segment: "If the final landing point of this long chain is not any point among A, B, C, D, E, J, G, and S, but a 'prion point', then the final product of the folding of the amino acid long chain is a prion. Because of some For reasons that have not yet been explained, prions have the ability to transform the source matter of living things similar to their own structure and turn them from correctly folded to incorrectly folded. "

Song Shufu frowned: "Is there more than one prion point?"

"Let's assume there is more than one." Ai Qinglan said: "I can even predict that there may be non-pathogenic 'prions' in nature. They are not pathogenic, but they are still incorrectly folded, and can be transformed to correctly folded. "

……………………………………………………………………

Time flies, and several months have passed.

The God of Heaven Selection looked at the paper "On the Discovery of Non-Pathogenic Proteases in Mosses" in his hand and fell into deep thought.

The old senior looked very tired. In recent months, he has been really worried about eliminating the great turmoil hidden in Tianling Ridge.

But this does not affect his follow-up research in this area.

This paper has a "back version", and only people with specific permissions can see the hidden second half after exchanging it.

In fact, Shenzhou had already discovered prions hundreds of years ago - or, in other words, discovered the phenomenon caused by prions.

How much have they accumulated on this phenomenon?

Ai Qinglan's team can find a large number of suspected cases just by flipping through the files. Then, they can use the prion cycle amplification technology to eliminate them one by one.

There is a kind of prion in some mosses in Shenzhou. They are not pathogenic most of the time. However, when the moss is invaded by a certain fungus, some parts adjacent to the infected tissue will wither quickly.

The monk Wan Mugu who discovered this phenomenon came to the conclusion of "symbiosis with a certain plague" and wrote a good paper based on it. There are good citations in the Plague God Forest.

And now, this "a certain plague" has to be changed to "prion".

Of course, under normal circumstances, this is not a big discovery.

However, when it comes to the Yuan clan, the situation is different.

"The reason why no one can practice the Yuan clan's skills is because the Yuan clan is born with... multiple non-pathogenic prions, and the steps to refine mana require the help of these prions?"

This is an extraordinary discovery.

At the same time, it also explains why the Yuan clan cannot resist Huang Jing.

Under normal circumstances, prions are not enough to infect monks. But what if the prions themselves have the ability to couple mana?

Well, of course, ordinary prions cannot just couple a certain mana. But what if the mana is designed according to the prions themselves, or vice versa, the prions are designed according to the nature of the mana?

This also explains the origin of the Yuan clan's peculiar funeral.

Although the Yuan clan of the First Yuan Prison and the Third Yuan Prison all think that cannibalism is a custom evolved to cope with the environment lacking spiritual energy. But in the long time of 200 million years, the two planets have evolved exactly the same custom?

But what if the Yuan clan had this custom 200 million years ago?

In order to inherit non-pathogenic prions.

In other words...

"Yellow crystal, could it be the product of the secondary misfolding of the prion in the Yuan Clan?"

The cultivation of the Yuan Clan itself relies heavily on the non-pathogenic prion that the Yuan Clan itself coexists with.

However, the prion has already touched the edge of the ethereal realm - the subatomic level.

In other words, it could be... random.

It is not impossible for another completely different error to occur...

No, judging from the appearance of yellow crystal in the First and Third Yuan Prisons, this is very likely to be a high probability event.

And it is reasonable that Aluer can complete the transformation of the law alone.

The normal Yuan Clan law and the yellow crystal law are indeed of the same origin.

I am afraid that the Yuan Clan also has a means to correct this error and avoid the appearance of yellow crystal.

However, it is probably also erased by the Dragon Clan.

However...

- Is this because "it is related to the core of the law, and not erasing this kind of information will greatly increase the fighting ability of the Yuan Clan", or... "If the ban cannot be lifted after a certain period of time, then it will die on its own"?

Tianze God Lord shook his head and put this thought behind him.

Some doubts are not suitable to be said.

However, this also explains why the Yuan clan kneeled so easily in the hands of the dragon clan.

Because the core of the shape-changing method is "folding again".

If the absolute strength of both sides is not much different, the dragon clan's practice of the law will have a very obvious restraint on the Yuan clan's practice of the law.

This most ancient free and easy nodded and smiled: "Well, I'm finally a little closer to the descendants of the heavenly favor."

…………………………………………………………

Chen Feng set up the escape light, wrapped his wife and children, and walked on the way back home.

He looked anxious: "This time... I feel really bad. I even forgot Hou Fu's first birthday ceremony."

After completing the first phase of the research, Chen Feng remembered that his son's first birthday was over, so he hurriedly asked for leave and rushed back to his hometown with Ai Qinglan.

For the Shenzhou people, the first birthday is a big deal. Generally, the child's name is decided at this time.

However, Ai Qinglan really... forgot about it...

Until Houfu was one year and four months old...

"Ah..." Chen Feng held his head and cried out: "I even forgot to name him... I haven't thought of a good name for him in a year!"

Ai Qinglan held the baby in both hands and raised it high. Houfu held a piece of cake for the baby in his hand, and his feet swung, occasionally spilling some snack crumbs.

"I say, Chen Chuan...how about this name?"

"Ruan?" Chen Feng was stunned: "Do we have a friend with the surname Ruan who needs to be commemorated?"

"The name of the prion." Ai Qinglan said with a smile: "Hou Fu witnessed the entire process of the discovery of the prion, which is very commemorative."

"Well, this...it is commemorative, but...this meaning..."

"The prion can change the folding of the source of other creatures and make them their companions." Ai Qinglan smiled and rubbed her son's face with her nose: "So mother hopes that when you grow up, you can make many~many people become your companions-what do you think, Chuan'er?"

"Eh? Have you decided? This..."

"No?"

"Ah? This..."

"Stop talking nonsense! You chose the nickname, shouldn't the naming right of the scientific name be in my hands?"

"I don't think it can be counted like this?"

"I gave birth to the child, eh? Look for the paper, and I am the first author!"

"Hey! That's not the reason!"