Guide to Virology

Despite measures to sterilise its space stations, pathogens still make their way onto NanoTrasen Space Vessels. Below is a guide on how to deal with them.

Virology 101

The first, and most important way to prevent 99% of infections, it's proper hazard wear, and knowing how to keep the infection from spreading.

The Clothes

The following will protect you, from the dangerous infections of space, each giving more and more (till total) protection against infection:

• Level-3 Bio Hood
• Level-3 Bio Suit
• Medical or White Jumpsuit
• Sterile Mask
• Latex Gloves
• Shoes (White shoes and Galoshes are the best)
• Private (clean) Air Flow System

For those not in the medical profession, the following commonly avaliable items will help reduce your chances of infection:

• Any internals hooked up to a tank
• Gloves
• Clothes

Isolation

If you, or another crew member are infected, do not spread the infection further. Seek the isolation bay of the medical wing, or head to a room no one will enter but yourself and other infected.

Cleanliness

Cleaning blood spills from the ground will prevent contact contamination, make sure blood is cleaned from the floor at all time. Any blood splatter out there could hold a dreaded space infection. Contact a janitor if you see blood on the floor, do not interact with the blood if you suspect possible infection chance.

Mucus caused by infected people sneezing also carries the same problem.

Methods of Infection

The following are the various ways a disease can spread, keep this in mind at all times:

• Airborne - The most dangerous and quick spreading, if you are anywhere within the breathing area of the infected crew member, you have a chance to be infected.
• Direct Contact - Requires you to touch, been touched, or be extremely close to the source of the infection. The infection could be from a blood spill (all blood spills containing contact, or airborne, infections can infect through blood contact).
• Direct Infection - The infection has been forced into the infected crew member, they are not infectious themselves. The only way to spread these infections, is through getting the patient's blood directly into another crew member.

Viruses

Primarily, this is your job. Find a batch of a virus, analyze it, and then produce a cure. You also research and splice new forms of virus.

Equipment

You have a number of machines around virology which help in the both analysing, curing, and research viruses.

• Isolation Centrifuge - This machine takes vials filled with blood and isolates pathogens or antibodies. It will automatically detect whether a sample of blood contains either, and can be useful for telling which people are infected. It can then isolate the pathogen, producing a virus dish, or isolate the antibody, producing a vial of antibodies.
• Pathogenic incubator - This machine takes virus dishes made by the centrifuge, or from the samples in your lab and grows them. It requires diluted milk (virus food) to work however, so ask the Chemist or Chef or use the virus food dispenser in Virology. The machine will ping when the virus reaches a large enough size to be worked with. Radiating the machine may cause the virus to mutate and change one or more of it's symptoms. You can also add a beaker of blood to the machine and infect it with whatever virus dish is currently in the machine.
• Disease Analyser - Putting a sufficiently grown virus dish in here will analyse the virus and display the symptoms on a piece of paper and on examining the virus dish. Also allows the Disease Splicer to show what the symptoms you're splicing are. This will also add a virus to the virus database, allowing it to be named and detected by a medical scanner.
• Disease Splicer - Each virus has four GNA strand which control which symptoms it causes. This splicer can isolate one of those strains and store it. This destroys the dish in the process however. You can then save the strand to a disk and transfer it to a different virus dish. This is how you can make your own viruses.

Curing

If you're concerned about the monkeys and don't want to have a pen full of contagion conveniently sitting around, move a single monkey to one of your isolation rooms and treat/infect them there. You can also use this as an easy way to keep all your cures localized and in a single sample.

• Take a Virus Dish and add it to the Pathogenic incubator.
• Add a beaker of blood.
• 'Inject' the blood with the virus using the Pathogenic incubator.
• Inject some into a monkey to infect it.
• Inject the monkey with radium to start antibody production. This may take multiple injections and multiple attempts. A large and rapid amount of toxin damage is usually an indicator of antibodies. Using the antibody scanner also works.
• Wait for a minute or two. This part is the most important, if you take blood too early, there will be no antibodies.
• Take some blood from the monkey and add it to the Isolation Centrifuge. It should display some antibodies.
• A vial of antibodies will be produced. This can be injected into other people to cure the disease. Note that isolating antibodies takes a long time and requires a body to produce antibodies to produce a very limited amount. Stocking up on antibodies in an outbreak is advisable. Even miniscule amount of pure antibodies is enough to start breeding in patient, so they can be dilluted with any liquid to produce large amounts of vaccine

If there happens to be an outbreak on the station you'll need a few extra steps.

• Find someone with the virus (shouldn't be too difficult as people like to complain.)
• Extract some blood and then put it in the Isolation Centrifuge.
• Isolate the pathogen.
• This will produce a Virus Dish.
• Follow the above steps.

Optional steps are:

• Put the Virus Dish in the Pathogenic incubator and grow it until the machine pings.
• Put the Virus Dish into the Disease Analyser to tell what the disease does.

If it works, congratulations. You've found a cure. Make sure to inject all infected and anyone else to vaccinate them. It only take a few units per person to cure/vaccinate them, so try to be as efficient as possible. You can dilute the antibodies with water and as long as one unit of antibodies in injected the cure will still work.

Splicing

To understand splicing, you must know that every virus has 4 GNA strands. Each strand has a respective symptom related to it, in varying degrees of severity, 4 being the lowest, and first symptom to manifest, and 1 being the highest, and final symptom to manifest. The disease splicer allows you to replace GNA strands with other GNA strands of the same level.

The disease splicer has three functions, which allow you to modify viruses, allowing you to define which GNA strands they have. The first of these functions is utilising the splicing function, to copy a GNA strand from an inserted virus tray to the disease splicer buffer. This is done by selecting the desired GNA strand. Doing so will destroy the virus tray in the process, so be aware of this fact.

The disease splicer’s second function is to copy whatever strand it has stored in its buffer, to a disk. These disks can be inserted into the disease splicer, uploading their respective strand to its buffer immediately, and unlike in the case of virus trays, disks will remain intact upon uploading their strand.

The final function of the disease splicer is to apply the strand stored within its buffer, to a virus, replacing the current strand on the respective level of the buffer’s strand’s level. This is done by selecting the strand located in the buffer.

With these functions in mind, the process in order for you to develop your own virus follows these steps:

• Firstly, you must obtain a disk for each strand level that you wish to apply to a virus. This is where the incubator’s irradiating functions prove useful, as you can potentially generate every GNA strand you want, by mutating a base virus.
• Secondly you must obtain a virus upon which you will apply your desired GNA strands. It does not matter what the original strands are, as you will be overwriting them with your desired strands.
• Finally you must insert this dish into the splicer, and splice each strand from your disks, by uploading them to the buffer one at a time, and splicing them over the disease.

Once you have your final product, you can use the Cure Research Machine to create a beaker of blood containing the virus.

Symptom Listings

These are all the symptoms and their effect:

Stage 4

Gibbingtons Syndrome: Gibs the infected lifeform.

Radian's Syndrome: Deals radiation to the infected lifeform.

Dead Ear Syndrome: Deafens the infected lifeform

Monkism Syndrome: Turns the infected lifeform into it's monkey version if it has one, otherwise it gibs.

Suicidal Syndrome: Causes the infected lifeform to attempt suicide.

Toxification Syndrome: Deals toxin damage to the infected lifeform.

Reverse Pattern Syndrome: Increases the body temperature and deals clone damage to the infected lifeform.

Shutdown Syndrome: Disables the limbs of the infected lifeform.

Longevity Syndrome: Heals the lifeform of organ damage, deals damage if cured, ages the lifeform by 8 years.

Greater Magnitis: Causes the infected lifeform to pulls anything not bolted down and all silicon units within 6 tiles of the infected lifeform towards the infected lifeform.

Kingston Syndrome: Turns the infected lifeform into a Tajaran, will kill certain lifeforms due to too great biological differences.

Spontaneous Cellular Collapse: Causes the infected lifeform to produce polynitric acid and slowly break down.

Necrosis: Melts the flesh or exteriors of the infected lifeform and turn them into a skeleton.

Fizzle Effect: Gives the infected lifeform a sore throat and the sniffles.

Arachnogenesis Effect: Causes the infected lifeform to vomit up spiderlings.

Biolobulin Effect: Gives the infected lifeform the ability to projectile vomit unstable goo.

Toxin Sublimation: Causes the infected lifeform to randomly create plasma gas.

Stage 3

Fragile Bones Syndrome : This will lower the threshold at which the infected lifeform will break bones, if it has any.

Hyperacidity : This will deal toxin damage to the infected lifeform.

World Shaking Syndrome : This will cause the infected lifeform's vision to appear shaky.

Telepathy Syndrome : This will grant telepathy to the infected lifeform.

Lazy Mind Syndrome : This will cause the infected lifeform's brain to take damage.

Hallucinational Syndrome : This will cause the infected lifeform to experience vivid hallucinations.

Hard of Hearing Syndrome : This will reduce the infected lifeform's hearing.

Uncontrolled Laughter Effect : This will cause the infected lifeform to laugh uncontrollably.

Topographical Cretinism : This will cause the infected lifeform to become confused resulting in directional issues.

DNA Degradation : This causes clone damage to the infected lifeform.

Groaning Syndrome : This causes the infected lifeform to groan.

Lesser Magnitis : This will cause small metallic objects to move towards the infected lifeform.

Stage 2

Loudness Syndrome : This will cause the infected lifeform to scream.

Automated Sleeping Syndrome : This will increase the infected lifeform's drowsiness, causing them to sleep for brief periods.

Resting Syndrome : This causes the infected lifeform to collapse.

Blackout Syndrome : This blinds the infected lifeform.

Anima Syndrome : This causes the infected lifeform to cough and makes the virus airborne.

Appetiser Effect : Increases the infected lifeform's hunger levels requiring them to eat more.

Refridgerator Syndrome : This causes the infected lifeform to shiver.

Hair Loss : This causes the infected lifeform to lose it's hair, if it has any.

Adrenaline Extra : This causes the infected lifeform to produce hyperzine, allowing them to run faster. A side effect to this is jitteriness.

Glasgow Syndrome : This causes the infected lifeform to produce ethanol, making them drunk over time.

Stage 1

Coldingtons Effect : This causes the infected lifeform to sneeze, which can produce mucus allowing for the transfer of the virus onto a solid surface. This does not make the disease airborne.

Flemmingtons : This causes the infected lifeform to have mucus running down it's throat.

Saliva Effect : This causes the infected lifeform to drool.

Twitcher : This causes the infected lifeform to twitch.

Headache : This causes the infected lifeform to experience a mild headache.

Uncontrollable Bowel Syndrome : This causes the infected lifeform to experience diarrhea, reducing the infected lifeforms hunger level and improving its toxin level. This also transfers the virus to a solid surface.