Viruses are one of the most important forces of the nature .Viruses and microbes are the reasons for life and the complexity that we see in biological systems . Viruses acts as stabilising force in the nature .
Microbes uses different strategies for infection .One of the ways by which viruses facilitate its propagation is by hijaking the host’s control and command centre (brain )
Toxoplasma parasite
This is a usual parasite found in cats ,rats and other animals .To complete its lifecycle it has to enter the cat intestine .Parasite uses a clever trick for that .Parasite enters the mouse brain cell and instructs the cell to send neurotransmitter messages to other neurons . This makes the mouse fearless .The fearless zombie mouse will start exploring the world and will eventually eaten by the cats. This completes the life cycle of hte parasite .
Rabies
Most the stories like Dracula /Zombies/Vampires are human beings attempt to understand rabies .It was unkown till late 1800s that a virus is causing the rabies .There are many myths about rabies around the world .
Rabies is a deadly disease which affects the brain and turn people to real zombies .It causes a set of phobias like fear of water,sound ,moving things etc.
Rabies changes the behaviour and introduces rapid eye movement ,high hert beats ,palpitations .Once the virus reaches the brain death occurs in 2–3 days .
( There are 14 documented cases in which the patient was able to survive rabies .Usually this is done by medically induced coma and anti-virals .99.99% cases it will not help )
In popular myth Dracula ,the vampire bats represents Dracula .Bats are the natural reservoir of rabies .Usually bats are immune to the rabies and virus gets activated when the bat is sick or immunity of the bat is low .In the Dracula story a person is recruited to his gang when he bites them using his canine teeth (Like a dog/bat bite).The person becomes zombie after 30–40 days .Rabies also takes 30–40 days to reach the brain turn people to zombies .Once they turn to zombies they start biting others gets unnatural powers .A rabies infected person is usually chained to bed and it takes 4–5 people to control the patient .
List goes on and on.
The list of microbes that alter the behaviour of animals and plants is huge .This includes flu viruses ,covid-19 and many viruses which can cause long term damage in brain .Certain dementia ,alzheimer and cancers are due to virus infection .
Does virus/microbes take away our free will ?
If microbes can control our brain and change our personality ,then do we have free will or is it just an illusion created by our brain ?
Famous Physicist Niels Bohr once said “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” Similar to that any decision that we think it is a free choice can be traced back to automatic and deterministic electro-chemical reactions in brain .Sam Haris in his book called “Free will” explores this subject in great detail .
Our viral origins.
5 to 10% of our DNA codes were acquired from viruses .This is an on going process and like computer viruses they also can add its code to our own cell DNA .Many times these are harmless and once the host dies ,They detach from the host’s DNA and again becomes virus .Viruses can exchange genetic materials with other types of viruses and form ne ones pretty quickly .Virus follow one rule is that is there are no rules.
Mitocondria
Certain viruses and microbes co-evolved with cell and became part of the cell .One example of such a microbe is mitochondria .This is called the power house of the cell .Mitochondria has its own DNA .Usually in sexual reproduction this DNA is passed from mother to child .Mitochondria removed its viral replication process and that way it got place to stay and a way to go to next generation and in-turn cells got a tool to produce energy efficiently .
Learning ability and viruses
Neurons shares lot of features with viruses. The plasticity of the neurones and the way it changes the wirings/connections with other neurons gives the learning ability to the animal .
The changes in neural wiring is initialed by a gene called Arc gene . Arc genes might be responsbile for creating higher intelligence that results in consciousThis gene works almost like a virus .They go and “infect” a nerve cell and delivered cargo that is required for new connections .The “cargo” delivered by the arc gene contains detailed plan ( chemical molecues ) to cut/make connections .If we loose this gene then our learning ability will be gone for ever . The speculation is that this gene is a virus which became part of our DNA . In a way we can say that our brain exist because of some pre-historic viruses .
