T-Virus

[nemesiswontdie]

Essentially, that would be necrophilia right?

Yes,yes it would.

Or let the zombie spit into your mouth.

Sounds like fun! But isnt zombie spit acid or some shit like that? Or am I thinking of their vomit?

[jagger916]

Or let the zombie spit into your mouth.

But, that's not nearly as fun!

[TheSelfishGene]

Hey Gene, quick question following on from Karui bringing up Ebola...

Now, I'm just going off the top of my head/memory on this. So, just going out on a limb here...

Honestly put, I have a bad memory when it comes to biology overall, however virology is quite interesting to me. So, my apologies for whatever I screw up on these questions as I'm just writing this up on studies/experiments and general reports on the strain findings, naming and so-on that I've read in the past. ;

Ebola and Marbug are the two main Filoviridae, with five known subtypes - Zaire virus, Sudan ebolavirus, Reston ebolavirus, Cote d'Ivoire ebolavirus and Bundibugyo ebolavirus.

Considering that the Lake Victoria Marburgvirus was being found within Megabats/Fruit Bats/Flying Foxes outside of primate infection and eventually caused outbreaks with VHF symptoms over a time-frame, the source of the Filoviridae originally being suspected as being of plant origin (can't remember who wrote the paper, was based on observed cycles between a particular plant's flowering periods to Ebola outbreaks as well a few other things) back in the 90s if my memory is correct.

The plant origin evidence may be a confounding factor. If the plant flowers seasonally, and the outbreaks were seasonal, this could be a pure co incidence. It'd need to be shown that the plant contained the virus before people were infected with it. And the flowering -> outbreaks idea suggests that the infection jumping from one species to another is reproducible, and not the result of a rare one off event. This would also need to be shown to be the case. Then you'd also have to show that the carrier species can transfer it onto humans.

Now, considering the general diet of a Megabat and that about three or four species of them are known carriers (without symptoms) of Ebola, Marburg and other viruses that can be transferred to other animals as well as humans (in some species - Rabies is a common disease carried by them).

Other Ebola, anti-bodies were found in Guinea Pigs around Zaire and an Ebola-like particle was if my memory is correct, either found and stimulated within a particular type of insect - which also have similar diets to that of the Megabat, although Dr. Swanepoel's study with 24 plants injected with the virus failed in order to find an origin point (although, it was recorded that 13 died due to being physically injected with the virus) within plants, so that's left as an unsolved point of origin and/or infection considering the general diets of most strain carriers.

With those, could it be possible that the point of origin is actually plants - carried by vectors feeding, breeding and eventually building anti-bodies against the particular strains only to be transferred to primates', humans - similar to that of the RE5 Sonnentrope isolation and cultivation?

It could be plants. Vectors would be the most likely canidate, but eating is probably not the way that it's transferred. People eat plants and animals infected with viruses all the time, and they never infect people. It could just be contact with the plant, or maybe paticular parts, such as the seeds. But then these animals have to ultimately come in contact with humans in order for them to become infected.
A very convincing experiment would be to show that humans can get infected directly from contacting the same part of the plant that the suspected carriers do. However, ethically this would be difficult to conduct.

Of course, considering that Ebola is an RNA virus and that a new strain was found in 2007 and confirmed in 2008 that is 30% different to the original strain could mean that it may have rapid RNA mutations as seen in other RNA viruses having high mutation rates.

You probably know this, but RNA molecules are a single strand, whereas DNA molecules are double stranded. So when there is a DNA mutation, this causes a mis-match in the base-pairing. One strand is taken to be the reference, so 50% of the time it reverts back to how it was, and the other 50% of the time, the template strand changes to the new mutation. With only one strand, RNA doesn't have this error checking facility.

Other kinds of mutations exist, where whole sections of DNA/RNA are deleted. A really extreme example is this. This is where virus biology gets a bit different from regular cell biology. Imagine a virus strain that can't make its own shell. If one particle of this strain infects a cell, then this virus won't be able to reproduce, because the newly created virus will never assemble into packages that can become infectious.
However, if this virus strain is co-infected with another strain that can make virus shells, this it's own DNA/RNA can go inside the shell coded by another virus, and go on and infect things.
So you can have these horribly mutated viruses which are unable to infect things. That's one way mutations in a virus can accrue. Two co-infected RNA genomes can also recombine within a cell, and give rise to new combinations and strains.

Virus genomes are tiny, and very compact (compared to humans, with only ~1% of DNA coding for proteins). So I imagine that the 30% difference between strains is significant. Most probably in the protein shell which envelops a virus (generally the other virus genes are so critical that mutations in them mean they can't reproduce at all). And as it's this shell that interacts with the hosts, this is probably why the strains have different host specificity.

Considering the general symptoms over the course of the early stages of infection, with the HMF being a main cause of the outbreak - in some cases, the rapid blood loss and/or pressure on the brain can impact the infected into well... dulling them down a tad and due to to the rapid cell division pumping the body full of the virus and recorded in longer periods of infection - a carrier/infected person's body may actually begin to rot after the circulatory system is overloaded and on the overall - the circulation is rather well... screwed by the amount of infected cells against their division rate.

When you have a viral infection, what generally happens is that the virus reproduces alot within the cell, and then ruptures out of the cell, and the newly formed particles go on to infect other cells. So there is cell death, but as far as I know, not on a huge scale. Just to tie it in to Resident Evil, there may be loss of cells in the brain due to viral reproduction.

The lack of general thought, has been seen with a general thought "Feeling sick. Go to city, see doctor." leading to the person coughing, sneezing or even bleeding at that point allowing viral-filled particles within bodily fluids to spread out due to the VHF caused.

This is absoutely true, and one of the reasons viruses are so successful. You need a critical number and density of people before an outbreak can occur. This is thought to have occured with the rise of agriculture. Because people became more dependent on a smaller, fixed, land area, you had more people living near it, and with that density increase (and also living with animals and things) that's what started some viruses being able to jump to humans from animals, and mutate and recombine in their bodies.

(On the fluid comment, personally, my Mother suffers from Hydrocephalus, and I had to assist the doctor at the time, she had to have it emptied not that long ago and had shocking memory and wouldn't always respond until fluid was removed before she was able to fully respond and coordinate herself properly).

I'm sorry to hear that. I only hope that it's not too taxing on you, your mother and family. I'm not 100% sure, and I really don't want to offend with my lack of knowledge, but I think that the memory blanks and things are caused by pressure on the brain? You can really see how delicate the organ is. This fact could probably be encorporated into a theory as to how Resident Evil zombies work too.


Essentially, somewhat similar to the general effects shown within Biohazard? Considering that the initial strains' incubation period could last from 2 to 21 days, however there is also the newest strain that can go up to 42 (or possibly more) days. Within that time period, if misdiagnosed from the initial symptoms and pathogens being spread (say, a busy doctor's office from someone nearby who has either come across a carrier OR a point of origin) could theoretically cause an outbreak if the virus has undergone a period of mutation to a similarity of the T, G outbreak we seen within Raccoon (especially if you consider the leeches containing the virus for such a period of time, which could make it a couple of strains of T, followed by the later G variant)?

Another question, what if a particular strain was to target and/or additionally infect Mitochondria (following the idea presented by Hideaki Sena in his novel Parasite Eve of mitochondrial mutations) combined with the RNA having a higher mutation rate, Ebola having a rapid division.

If a virus destroys Mitochondria the cells can't function and it dies. Mitochondria do have DNA, and they do have genes which are encoded in the DNA. However, they don't have the protein manufacturing machinery, and it relies on the cell to translate mitochondrial RNAs.
There's sort of a misconception that a virus has a modus operandi, whereas infact they don't. The fever headache and vomiting is all the bodies response to the virus. It's not the virus causing it to do it. And even though ebola has symptoms like this, so does a seasonal flu.

Theoretically, if a new strain was to do this and be spread out by a single carrier and it continued to mutate at a rapid rate and cause mutations from base Mitochondria - could it be actually possible to cause further mutation outside of Cancer and/or tumors, possibly similar to the G-Virus' initial point of origin from being a mutation found within Lisa Trevor's body (with her age being quite young, aging process wouldn't essentially be causing the level of cell destruction we see around the age of 25-26 years of age, with a natural anti-body response to T causing a mutation when the parasite is introduced, additionally with it adapting to Mitochondria, with it's mtDNA being connected to aging as well as general species and the amount of targeted specific sequences that could be contained within a singular infection differing between the gender inheritance (possibly, could explain Wesker's lack of visual aging, may have featured a variant with T-Veronica/Alexia over time additionally as well as repair on the genetic level)?

What a mitochondrion actually does is create a fuel molecule (ATP) for the rest of the cell to use. It really doesn't serve much more of a purpose then that. More mitochondria means more energy for the cell, although it doesn't necessarily have to use this energy to fuel cell division. Muscles have thousands of mitochondria, and purely for the purpose of physical movement.

The origin of the G virus is an interesting point. Lisa recieved at least 3 viruses before the G virus was discovered in her some 20 years later (IIRC). So this could be a result of the initial 3 viruses recombining.
I think the NE-T parasite that's introduced to her has nothing to do with it. The viruses probably couldn't interact with (ie. infect) the parasite for them to be able to interfere with it in any way.

Theoretically a virus can mess up the gene expression of a host. There's a gene in fruit flies called eyeless, because when you mutate it, the flies are eyeless. So when you switch it on, eyeless functions to create eyes. Of course, aside from a very very very brief moment in an animals life cycle, the eyeless gene is completely switched off.
I don't know if it was intentional, but I love how William Birkin has an extra eye where he shouldn't, as if the G virus has caused eyeless expression in his arm.
In an experiment that completely blew my mind, scientists switched on eyeless in the limbs of a fruitfly, and sure enough, eyes formed. You can see the result here http://www.ozdros.com/images/dpp-eyless50.jpg In the early sense of the series, there was a real sense of plausibility to it all. But it really all went out the window by the time 0 rolled around, and virology was substituted with alchemy.

I don't know a whole lot about the mitochondira causing ageing argument. If you could provide links or references I'd be happy to read them. But as for Wesker, I didn't think he had the T virus within him, and I thought it was something completely different? I haven't really been keeping up (and don't plan on replaying RE5 for quite some time).

However, it would probably be a multi-infection to cause something similar to the Biohazard zombies in comparison to the 28, [REC] types...

Sorry, just a general thought - hopefully I've worded this out alright (kinda falling asleep as I write this), but I think this is what Karui was originally getting at. ;

No worries. It's hard to know that people have understood what I mean when I'm just putting it out there on a message board, and especially there are people reading this who have different backgrounds and ages. It's pretty obvious that you know more about it than others, but I think Karui said it was research for a school project? Hopefully he at least got some good tips to use, but I can always tell people more about this sort of stuff. There's just so much to it.

[News Bot]

T-virus has little relation to Ebola aside from Wesker comparing the two since they are both similar (as RNA viruses). It is mentioned in Wesker's Report II that Birkin conducted an experiment with Ebola and Progenitor by combining Ebola with a mutated Progenitor. Thats where their relationship ends.

The T-virus itself is the result of merging Progenitor with leech DNA. The T-virus inherits Progenitor's ability to mutate individual cells and complete organisms (as well as revive dead cells) but the mutations are much more drastic and it has new traits (normally humans die from Progenitor or gain superhuman abilities, the T-virus probably replaces these with zombification and the Tyrant compatibility).

As for Progenitor, it is an ancient virus theorized to be responsible for the beginning of life itself due to its unique abilities and traits. It is trans-species.

[Enetirnel]

Thank you Gene, honestly put I'm just a general student who has just spent a fair amount of time reading medical books floating around the house such as the Miller -Keane medical encyclopedia, and some articles online - Henze K, Martin W (2003). "Evolutionary biology: essence of mitochondria", Lesnefsky EJ, et al. (2001). "Mitochondrial dysfuntion in cardiac disease ischemia-reperfusion, aging and heart failure"... Mostly books around here.

Anyway, sorry - I tend to misword things but I do understand you.

The plant origin evidence may be a confounding factor. If the plant flowers seasonally, and the outbreaks were seasonal, this could be a pure co incidence. It'd need to be shown that the plant contained the virus before people were infected with it. And the flowering -> outbreaks idea suggests that the infection jumping from one species to another is reproducible, and not the result of a rare one off event. This would also need to be shown to be the case. Then you'd also have to show that the carrier species can transfer it onto humans.

It could be plants. Vectors would be the most likely canidate, but eating is probably not the way that it's transferred. People eat plants and animals infected with viruses all the time, and they never infect people. It could just be contact with the plant, or maybe paticular parts, such as the seeds. But then these animals have to ultimately come in contact with humans in order for them to become infected.
A very convincing experiment would be to show that humans can get infected directly from contacting the same part of the plant that the suspected carriers do. However, ethically this would be difficult to conduct.

They observed the plants, and test a few of the insects and were unable to find Ebola particles within the insects during the period of time the plant went into season, bloomed and coinciding with that - the primates in that particular area did end up causing an outbreak of it.

Although, one patient infected with Zaire was assumed to have been bitten by an arthropod and contracted the virus - you're right that it's more likely a vector, but it's hard to tell for sure. Now, if it was a reaction during the general in-season period (depending on whether or not that particular flower drops seeds within that period or not) so, it could be during the pollination sequence that the virus is spread by a reaction from a general vector between the male and female flowers... or that during the process as a self-defense mechanism from being eating before the pollination sequence has completed, perhaps the plant releases spores to keep the wildlife that eat it as part of their natural diet?

Additionally, if my memory is correct as a little example of another spore spreading virus - a couple of the equine viruses that Megabats carry can be transmitted by spores (that are quite resistant to disinfectant, and can stay within soil for a good period of time) and infect horses be passed to other animals, such as cats, dogs and even humans.

Although, I think a general vector during that period is the best idea as well.

But if the Megabat has eaten fruit that the possible vector may have gotten into, OR simply ate a specific part of the plant then it could be possible to have quite an infectious range as the strain of Ebola found within the Megabat is that it can infect primates, as well as humans however Megabats contain other infections that can be passed to other animals and through direct contact with bodily fluids, bat may have spores within it's fur, it isn't unheard of for Megabats to bite people or animals if it's startled/being attacked by something such as a cat or a dog and transfer the virus via saliva.

So, with other animals being tested after being injected with the virus (snakes, other bats, mice and even spiders) having the general immune system response before eventual death then I wouldn't be surprised if cats, dogs could be possible carriers in the right circumstance.

You probably know this, but RNA molecules are a single strand, whereas DNA molecules are double stranded. So when there is a DNA mutation, this causes a mis-match in the base-pairing. One strand is taken to be the reference, so 50% of the time it reverts back to how it was, and the other 50% of the time, the template strand changes to the new mutation. With only one strand, RNA doesn't have this error checking facility.

Other kinds of mutations exist, where whole sections of DNA/RNA are deleted. A really extreme example is this. This is where virus biology gets a bit different from regular cell biology. Imagine a virus strain that can't make its own shell. If one particle of this strain infects a cell, then this virus won't be able to reproduce, because the newly created virus will never assemble into packages that can become infectious.
However, if this virus strain is co-infected with another strain that can make virus shells, this it's own DNA/RNA can go inside the shell coded by another virus, and go on and infect things.
So you can have these horribly mutated viruses which are unable to infect things. That's one way mutations in a virus can accrue. Two co-infected RNA genomes can also recombine within a cell, and give rise to new combinations and strains.

Virus genomes are tiny, and very compact (compared to humans, with only ~1% of DNA coding for proteins). So I imagine that the 30% difference between strains is significant. Most probably in the protein shell which envelops a virus (generally the other virus genes are so critical that mutations in them mean they can't reproduce at all). And as it's this shell that interacts with the hosts, this is probably why the strains have different host specificity.

Yes, I do know. Specifically, I know that Ebola is a single-strand, negative RNA type.

And that makes perfect sense, although it's different the listed infections are still the same as Zaire initially (primate, humans) although to my knowledge, natural carriers of it or anti-bodies haven't been found yet.

When you have a viral infection, what generally happens is that the virus reproduces alot within the cell, and then ruptures out of the cell, and the newly formed particles go on to infect other cells. So there is cell death, but as far as I know, not on a huge scale. Just to tie it in to Resident Evil, there may be loss of cells in the brain due to viral reproduction.

This is absoutely true, and one of the reasons viruses are so successful. You need a critical number and density of people before an outbreak can occur. This is thought to have occured with the rise of agriculture. Because people became more dependent on a smaller, fixed, land area, you had more people living near it, and with that density increase (and also living with animals and things) that's what started some viruses being able to jump to humans from animals, and mutate and recombine in their bodies.

I'm sorry to hear that. I only hope that it's not too taxing on you, your mother and family. I'm not 100% sure, and I really don't want to offend with my lack of knowledge, but I think that the memory blanks and things are caused by pressure on the brain? You can really see how delicate the organ is. This fact could probably be encorporated into a theory as to how Resident Evil zombies work too.

Sorry, was meaning cell division and multiplication of the infected cell, causing the virus to constantly replicate and ruptures within that amount of time with some of the longer incubation periods before the cell rupturing starts.

Yes, that's right the pressure does actually cause short-term memory and also can cause nerve damage. Due to VHF, the brain does haemorrhage and would most likely have the same general effect as Hydrocephalus and in some extreme cases motor skills are lost, as well as some sections of the brain being unable to receive the response from nerves within particular sections of the body (as an example, some patients have been able to move limbs but they are unable to feel it).

It would most likely happen considering that some of the zombies we see have are bleeding from the facial, and/or possible cranial region, and VHF could also cause pressure on the eyes.

Theoretically, if VHF does force some of the worst-case scenario Hydrocephalus effects then it could explain the zombies' lack of intelligence, motorskills, poor eye-sight or poor-hearing, complete use of limbs and possibly the ability to feel pain in particular parts of the body caused by the virus.

If a virus destroys Mitochondria the cells can't function and it dies. Mitochondria do have DNA, and they do have genes which are encoded in the DNA. However, they don't have the protein manufacturing machinery, and it relies on the cell to translate mitochondrial RNAs.
There's sort of a misconception that a virus has a modus operandi, whereas infact they don't. The fever headache and vomiting is all the bodies response to the virus. It's not the virus causing it to do it. And even though ebola has symptoms like this, so does a seasonal flu.

What a mitochondrion actually does is create a fuel molecule (ATP) for the rest of the cell to use. It really doesn't serve much more of a purpose then that. More mitochondria means more energy for the cell, although it doesn't necessarily have to use this energy to fuel cell division. Muscles have thousands of mitochondria, and purely for the purpose of physical movement.

The origin of the G virus is an interesting point. Lisa recieved at least 3 viruses before the G virus was discovered in her some 20 years later (IIRC). So this could be a result of the initial 3 viruses recombining.
I think the NE-T parasite that's introduced to her has nothing to do with it. The viruses probably couldn't interact with (ie. infect) the parasite for them to be able to interfere with it in any way.

Theoretically a virus can mess up the gene expression of a host. There's a gene in fruit flies called eyeless, because when you mutate it, the flies are eyeless. So when you switch it on, eyeless functions to create eyes. Of course, aside from a very very very brief moment in an animals life cycle, the eyeless gene is completely switched off.
I don't know if it was intentional, but I love how William Birkin has an extra eye where he shouldn't, as if the G virus has caused eyeless expression in his arm.
In an experiment that completely blew my mind, scientists switched on eyeless in the limbs of a fruitfly, and sure enough, eyes formed. You can see the result here http://www.ozdros.com/images/dpp-eyless50.jpg In the early sense of the series, there was a real sense of plausibility to it all. But it really all went out the window by the time 0 rolled around, and virology was substituted with alchemy.

I don't know a whole lot about the mitochondira causing ageing argument. If you could provide links or references I'd be happy to read them. But as for Wesker, I didn't think he had the T virus within him, and I thought it was something completely different? I haven't really been keeping up (and don't plan on replaying RE5 for quite some time).

Oh no, not meaning that - just if that the strain of the virus was to be more likely to affect and cause general autoimmune responses by the body, if a more complex RNA strain to possibly cause an infection, response or even react to the proteins and enzymes surrounding the mtDNA and cause mutation of it, just as that Mitochondrial diseases are mostly caused by a mutation, mostly with other genome variants however, it can also be caused by drug effects over an extended period of time as well as some infections or of course, general defects but they can vary from person to person as the same change in one person can lead to a different response in another.

The G-Virus and the NE-Alpha parasite were just brought up, if Lisa was injected initially and later received the parasite which was "absorbed" it could be possible that over the period of time the strain may have mutated, and as a response to the parasite's toxin release that the autoimmune system attempts to counter, however if Lisa had a natural anti-body to the initial strain of T, then injected with other strains that caused mutation over time if a new strain was created that could also effect the stucture of mitochondria within her body as they mutate quite rapidly, then theoretically a physical mutation could (such as Birkin's additional eye, muscular changes...) and it would make sense if Birkin had modified the strain found within Lisa, so that the virus that does affect the mitochondria is only capable of continuing it's general reproduction within another person either directly directly related, or with a similar enough DNA, mtDNA to the initial person infected.

Theoretically, if during the process of modifying the virus Birkin had created mutagenic stock - it could explain Wesker's lack of aging as well as physical abilities skyrocketing (although, I say mutagenic stock as I'm going by the initial ideas that were thrown out there by Capcom as I actually have no means to play Biohazard 5 again to get the exact details).

Something similar may have been found by Alexia Ashford, which was cultivated in her ants. So, (with the plant idea earlier) the ant possibly contained Ebola, and if Alexia cultivated and modified it to a similar form to Lisa's (although her's was over time, she survived it) but had to force cryostasis due to the sheer speed of the mutation in order to survive and force the mutation to occur at a slower rate, allowing for the mitochondria to have a slower mutation than what would be caused by Alexia's variant.

Of course, before the Sonnentrope was introduced in Biohazard 5 - Progenitor was also known as The Mother Virus, now I'm just following up on the mitochondria mutation idea considering that mitochondria have been referred to as the Grandmother/Mother/Daughter for a clean line of inheritance however, Lisa's Mother - Jessica was given a different strain, which she had no anti-bodies against. Theoretically, they had the anti-bodies but also considering that mtDNA can contain quite a lot of different genetic sets over time (I've seen people refer to that as "Ancient DNA within mitochondria", but I wouldn't word it like that) which once it has an area of further infection, higher chances of mutation then theoretically with that it should have a higher rate of infection against those who may have had natural anti-bodies to the initial origin strain.

As for the trademark thing of zombies, the constant hunger. Now, mitochondria when repairing and mutating do require a great deal of energy and in order to supply energy to our body, we eat and we sleep in order to give it some "downtime". With the lowered intellect and general skills from VHF, theoretically if it were as I've just put the idea out there then they would require a great deal of energy and/or food sources and because of a lack of general motorskills, sight and hearing anything could be a predator or a food source so, they simply must eat to provide their body energy before it bleeds out. I mean, we do see zombies in Biohazard laying on the ground, or even just sitting there before being triggered to get up and they do what zombies do best - cannibalism to try and quench the never-ending hunger.

Of course, just pure speculation if the virus replicates, eventually mutates and can then cause general aforementioned affects to the organelles, the changes could cause mutation if the mitochondria is damaged and attempts to repair itself.

You can find articles on mitochondria causing aging in most books on the subject and cell biology (I also believe that the article on the subject of mitochondria also contains a fair amount of article links, book titles in the reference section). But hopefully this little link here will do for the current time, as I'll have to have a hunt around the house to find the books I read a while back.

Hopefully this makes sense, sorry I'm awful at wording this properly. ;

[Karui]

Virus' and the immune system are great aren't they? It's fascinating how complex these molecular sized things can go through so much. Thanks for the detailed responses and links. You guys have taught me quite a lot. I'll still read anything else you feel interested in sharing too. I am interested to know the processes that these virus' go through to do such things to the brain and the effects it has. I might do some more research soon.

[Det. Beauregard]

While I think viruses are fascinating, when I think of zombies and biology (I rarely think of one without the other), I can't help but wonder if prions could create zombies.

Prions are not viruses, but misfolded proteins that can cause transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) in humans (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease, or BSE) in cattle. It can result from hereditary factors, a sporadic mutation, or an infection; there is no cure, and it is almost always fatal. Symptoms include ataxia, dementia, paralysis, and death (typically after the course of several years).

Without getting too detailed, CJD is caused by a shape change in the protein PrPc to form PrPSc, the infectious prion. An essential rule of molecular and cellular biology is that structure dictates function - even a single change in an amino acid at the simplest protein level of organization can change the way the protein folds and orients itself in a 3D space. Thus, its function may change; in this case, it eats away the brain so as to resemble a sponge, causing the symptoms listed above.

In England in the 1990s, many people became infected with variant-CJD after eating infected beef. Prions are not destroyed by cooking, thus people are even susceptible to infection from "well-done" beef. Eating beef has freaked me out ever since I've learned of TSEs, although infected meat is far from the only means of prion infection.

Kuru is another example of a TSE that was first observed in the Fore people of New Guinea, who ate the brains of their people who died from the disease. The infection continued to spread throughout the Fore people, as they had little modern medical knowledge (and refused to stop, you know, eating their dead comrades!) The whole thing has a Resident Evil 5 vibe to it, don't you think?

Anyway, to tie this in with zombies, if these symptoms were coupled with violent responses, "zombies" (not the undead kind, obviously) could theoretically be created. I'm surprised Resident Evil hasn't acknowledged this; perhaps RE6 will have prion-based zombies?!

[Itashious_boy]

oking ebola is a virus that takes ahold of an ifectee and basically rots the internal organs, and turns it into liquid, there have been 26 epidimics in south america only because it spreads so fast, it has a 3/5 chance of killling the host, but the visrus comes and goes so fast that it leaves an intire village, goes back "into the forest where it came from", and kills a town of 500 people to only 50 surviving people. there has been only one incodent in the united states in chichago, no one ever was infected with ebola v, except a couple of mice, thats how it was spread, rats and mice from africa got to america. the scientists studying those mice never found a reason as to why the mice survived such a long trip over seas, but it was keep under wraps for a year untill it was realeased as a second page news report.

its a scary virus but no t-virus has nothing in common with ebola, all it does is turn your enternal organs into liquid, most often people die in a pool of their own blood....

the scientists in africa tracing ebola epidimics into the forests fear HIV more than they do ebola though because its a slow killing virus, harder to track and kill.


but if your looking for a virus that might reanimate the body and radiate someones brain functions to the point that they attack other people you might want to look at the rare strain of rabies.
yes this virus exists but its like ebola, its a speed up version of normal rabies, so once its in the host it rapidly changes the cell function and structure, basically melts the brain and puts the victom in a state of hyper paranoia, there have been only a few cases of this virus popping up but it kills the victom too fast for it to spread.